Virtual machines, containers, functions. Market knowledge for IT decision makers since 2003
Microsoft is informing me that since the release as free product Virtual Server 2005 R2 has topped 155,000 downloads in first 3 weeks with another 5,000 downloads for Virtual Machines Additions for Linux beta.
Everybody among these downloaders should also check the just started Service Pack 1 beta program.
Microsoft has now officially launched the Service Pack 1 beta program for Virtual Server 2005 R2.
This beta 1 features:
A second beta is expected after the availability of AMD I/O Virtualization Technology delivered with Opteron socket 1207 somewhere in Q3 2006, and will feature:
The Service Pack 1 RTM is expected for Q1 2007.
Download beta 1 here.
Quoting from the Altiris official announcement:
Altiris, Inc., a pioneer of service-oriented management software, today announced that Altiris Software Virtualization Solution (SVS) has won Best New Product honors at Microsoft Management Summit (MMS) 2006.
SVS was chosen for this prestigious acknowledgement by editors of Windows IT Pro Magazine.
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More than 50 products competed for the coveted Best of Show award at MMS 2006, Microsoft’s largest-ever gathering of information technology professionals and Microsoft partners. Best of Show candidates were required to deliver products that are easily integrated and directly beneficial to the Windows network environment.
Quoting from CRN:
Storage virtualisation software company Akimbi Systems opened a regional base in Sydney and appointed former Trend Micro MD Chris Poulos as its Asia-Pacific boss.
Poulos reports to Reza Malekzadeh, the company’s Paris based vice president of international operations.
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According to Poulos, Malekzadeh offered him the position of MD of Akimbi straight after his departure from Trend.He also said Akimbi is a channel focused company. It has recently signed Australian based Capitalhead and Technical Architecture Solutions to sell its software product Virtual Lab Automation Software across the region…
Read the whole article at source.
Note that the articles begins very bad referring Akimbi as a storage virtualization company, but the news is interesting.
Well, not a single whitepaper but a whole collection enterely stored in Microsoft TechNet repository and divided into 4 sections:
Read everything here.
The Altiris Software Virtualization Solution (SVS) development team wrote a nice article detailing security approach they took in SVS, describing rights, file system permissions and antivirus solutions interaction.
Read it here.
On the Altiris Juice community popped up since a while a great utility for Software Virtualization Solution (SVS) 2.0: Software Virtualization Trinket.
It allows users to activate, deactivate or import new applications via system tray.
It’s nothing special but I believe it makes so clear how immediate can be enable or disable a virtualized application, and how simple can be having several versions (even betas) of the same application ready to be launched in the same system.
Download it here.
Parallels continue to deliver frequent betas of the first desktop virtualization solution for Apple Mac OS X on Intel architectures.
This new build fixes another bunch of problems and add:
Download it here.
Devil Mountain Software (DMS) launched Clarity Suite 2006, an hosted (and partially free) performance monitoring solution for Microsoft and VMware virtual infrastructures:
DMS Clarity Suite is a hosted, fully-outsourced performance analysis and decision support solution for Windows-based Virtual Machine environments. Designed as an alternative to costly systems and performance management frameworks, DMS Clarity Suite allows IT professionals to accurately assess Virtual Machine guest O/S, host O/S and application performance requirements by analyzing key process and systems metrics and translating them into actionable recommendations.
- Hosted Architecture
DMS Clarity Suite is the industry’s first fully-hosted management solution for Virtual Infrastructure. Through the combination of a robust, web-enabled metrics agent and a secure, hosted analysis portal, DMS Clarity Suite leverages the Internet to create a ubiquitous performance management backbone, obviating the need for elaborate frameworks and supporting servers.- Immediate R.O.I.
Because DMS Clarity Suite is a fully-outsourced solution you can be up and running in minutes, as opposed to weeks or even months with a traditional framework. Just download the DMS Clarity Tracker Agent, install in the target VM and type-in your Customer ID – it’s that simple. With no costly build-out you’ll reap a nearly immediate return on your investment.- Feature Rich
DMS Clarity Suite provides a rich set of powerful analysis tools, including our Clarity Suite web portal where you can compare & contrast virtual machines, project lifecycle, certify performance and conduct Deep DiveTM analysis of specific processes and subsystems. You also get a flexible events & alerts feature with customizable analysis tasks and email notification.- Zero Commitment
Your first 4 DMS Clarity Suite seats are absolutely free. That includes up to 3 Virtual Machine IDs + the Host O/S. Just click here to register and we’ll email you your complimentary Customer ID and Password.
Register for the 4 free seats here.
The virtualization.info Virtualization Industry Roadmap has been updated accordingly.
Altiris is gaining maximum momentum in application virtualization market segment with Software Virtualization Solution (SVS) 2.0 (free for personal use), the fervent Juice community and now this free plug-in for Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS) 2003.
Quoting from the Altiris official announcement:
Altiris, Inc., a pioneer of service-oriented management solutions, today announced the availability of the Altiris® Software Virtualization Solution™ Plug-In for Microsoft Systems Management Server to provide revolutionary software management capabilities for SMS administrators. The SVS Plug-In for Microsoft SMS is now available as a free download from the Altiris® Juice™ at www.altiris.com/juice/svs.
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SVS is architected to be open and manageable via any management framework. Altiris has leveraged this open architecture to develop a free plug-in for SMS to help eliminate command-line heavy lifting. Deployment and administration of SVS using SMS is now as simple as point and click.
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The SVS Plug-In for Microsoft SMS allows virtualized application management directly from the SMS 2003 console. An SMS administrator can now distribute virtualized applications through SMS advertisements and view SVS status reports all within the bounds of existing SMS-user security parameters. SVS operates using standard SMS 2003 objects, normal inventory operations and standard WMI calls.
You can read a related whitepaper titled Altiris SVS/SMS Integration Utility here and download the bits here.
The virtualization.info Virtualization Industry Roadmap has been updated accordingly.