Quoting from the Scalent official announcement:
Scalent Systems today announced general availability of Scalent Virtual Operating Environment (V/OE), an easily installable software suite that can result in dramatically lower IT costs and increased IT agility. Lower costs are achieved through a tripling of server utilization, reduced complexity and increased operational efficiency. IT agility is achieved through unique virtualization technology that decouples applications from the complexities of underlying server, network and storage resources.
With commodity servers rapidly becoming the backbone of enterprise IT infrastructure, corporate data centers are growing out of control. The decomposition of applications into multiple tiers and Web services architectures further accelerates this growth. It’s typical for an enterprise data center to add hundreds of servers every month, trying in vain to keep up with peak usage estimates, without knowing how much server capacity will actually be used. With most servers averaging less than 10 percent utilization at any given time, this problem — server sprawl — has become a focal point of IT concern and escalating costs.
“Current approaches for addressing ‘server sprawl’ are too narrow and do not focus on the real issue,” said Ben Linder , CEO of Scalent Systems. “Scalent Systems’ approach is the first to create true virtual infrastructure — uniting servers, network and storage into one virtual fabric.”
Cost-Effective Approach
Scalent V/OE offers a unique, cost-effective and manageable approach. It enables the decoupling of applications from the physical assets that run them. Scalent allows enterprise IT to manage a heterogeneous environment of servers, networks and storage as a single fabric. Resources are allocated to the applications that need them rapidly and dynamically.
The benefit, for customers, can be a tripling of average utilization for servers, as well as greater insight into peak load requirements and planning. As a result, IT management can begin to plan rationally for server expansion and purchase requirements and manage both purchasing and operational costs.
“For the typical enterprise IT environment, the runaway costs of server sprawl are becoming a huge strategic issue,” Linder said. “Our approach at Scalent Systems has been to really treat the underlying causes of the problem rather than the symptoms. As a result, IT management can not only see an immediate and dramatic increase in the utilization of the servers they already have, but now they can manage their longer-term server provisioning in an effective way.”
Scalent accomplishes this virtualization by a broad range of innovative software capabilities:
- Ease of installation
Scalent V/OE is nondisruptive to data center processes and typically installs in hours- Hardware independence
Scalent V/OE works with all popular currently installed servers, switches and storage in enterprise data centers- Operating system independence
Scalent V/OE supports Red Hat Linux, SUSE Linux, Microsoft Windows 2000, Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and Microsoft Windows XP- Full infrastructure virtualization
There is a logical separation of physical infrastructure (servers, network, storage) from the actual operating system and applications, allowing just-in-time allocation of infrastructure to applications. Server utilization goes up because unused servers are dynamically reassigned to other functions- Virtual topology
Connectivity virtualization shapes the underlying connectivity of LAN and SAN to match desired application topology, security and clustering requirements. Scalent actively controls the connectivity of a company’s network infrastructure to create any network topology or storage mapping- Standardization and compliance
Persona technology containerizes server software stacks (operating system, Web, application and database servers, and business rules) so that they can be created once and then easily placed on any available bare-metal or virtual server
About the Windows support announcement:
Scalent Systems today announced full Microsoft Windows support for its Scalent Virtual Operating Environment (V/OE) software, an easily installable software suite that can result in dramatically lower IT costs and increased IT agility. Windows support in V/OE enables enterprises with Microsoft Windows-based applications and Microsoft .NET deployments to more broadly deploy Scalent’s unique software-based approach to infrastructure virtualization.
Scalent V/OE offers a unique, cost-effective and manageable approach to the issue of server utilization. It enables the decoupling of applications from the physical assets that run them. Scalent allows enterprise IT to manage a heterogeneous environment of servers, networks and storage as a single fabric. Resources are allocated to the applications that need them rapidly and dynamically. Scalent V/OE allows multitiered Windows applications to be deployed on a virtual infrastructure, and supports location-independent booting of Windows servers from iSCSI- or Fibre Channel-based storage area network (SAN) storage.
The benefit, for customers, can be a tripling of average utilization for servers, as well as greater insight into peak load requirements and planning. As a result, IT management can begin to plan rationally for server expansion and purchase requirements and manage both purchasing and operational costs.
“With the availability of Scalent’s V/OE for Windows, IT managers have a new and innovative solution for deploying Windows-based servers in a more agile and manageable manner,” said Ben Linder, CEO of Scalent Systems. “Our unique software-based approach to infrastructure virtualization gives IT managers a powerful solution for Windows-based server farms as well as full compatibility with a wide range of Windows-based applications and middleware such as Microsoft .NET, Microsoft Exchange Server and Citrix Access Platform.”
Thanks to Steven Bink for the news.