Egenera Releases BladeFrame 4.0

“As always, the primary driver for the functionality in this release was input from our world-class customers,” noted Vern Brownell, founder and CTO, Egenera. “The Egenera BladeFrame system’s unique high availability and utility computing solutions have both been expanded with Release 4.0, which we believe further extends our 18-24-month market lead. Our continued focus on driving complexity out of the datacenter is also evident, with an enhanced graphical user interface and the ability to dynamically change server characteristics in seconds.”

Leveraging the richness of the Processing Area Network (PAN) architecture, Release 4.0 extends the Egenera BladeFrame system’s adaptability and utility computing capabilities, including:

Modification of Running Servers: Customers are now able to modify the configuration of a running server on the fly–without shutting down, interacting with hardware, interrupting service or impacting the user. In seconds, and entirely through software, a system administrator can add, remove or change the properties of Ethernet ports, disks and DVD drives; modify a server’s failover policy; alter boot characteristics; and change a server’s name/description. These enhancements compress the time required to modify datacenter infrastructure, speeding time to market for new or enhanced applications.

Virtual Machine Management: Release 4.0 enriches the synergy between the Egenera BladeFrame and VMware GSX Server virtual machine (VM) technology. Since VM functionality is often used to run multiple applications on a single server, it is imperative that the server be highly available. Without impacting running systems, the BladeFrame now provides seamless, automatic failover of virtual machines–functionality uniquely enabled by the PAN architecture. Moreover, the BladeFrame system’s I/O consolidation eliminates the need to cross-connect and/or cross-configure multiple servers to external storage, which is required to achieve failover with other products.

Chargeback: With Release 4.0, the Egenera BladeFrame captures detailed configuration information into an industry-standard XML format. This flexible approach enables customers to specify precise timeframes for collection and to choose the best-of-breed chargeback application that meets their individual requirements. Coupled with the BladeFrame’s repurposing and N+1 high availability, chargeback enables an end-to-end utility computing solution.

Enhanced Multicast: With Release 4.0, Egenera has improved the BladeFrame system’s native distributed multicast performance by up to 9x, providing the performance enterprise customers need to maintain and extend their competitive advantage.

Open Standards: With Release 4.0, the Egenera BladeFrame provides support for standard SCSI-II reservations, enabling customers to run products such as Microsoft Cluster Server while eliminating the SCSI-II reservation requirement from back-end storage devices. Likewise, users now have access to native support for EMC PowerPath. Egenera’s commitment to open standards enables customers to leverage industry-leading technologies from within the BladeFrame’s utility computing environment.

Enhanced GUI: Egenera has enhanced the BladeFrame graphical user interface (GUI) to be simpler, more useable and more intuitive. Cleaner page views, fewer clicks and graphical representation of system objects hide complexity from users, speed administrative tasks and improve system performance. The enhanced GUI enables datacenters to do more with fewer, less-skilled IT personnel, lowering ongoing operational costs.