Year: 2007

Quoting from InternetNews:

In a coup for fast-growing VMware , defense contractor General Dynamics has tapped the virtualization leader as a sub-contractor for development of a highly secure workstation based on commercial products.

The High-Assurance Platform (HAP) is being developed by General Dynamics’ subsidiary General Dynamics C4 Systems, which is the main contractor on the National Security Agency deal.

…

VMware said it will provide an extra layer of security in its virtualization software, which lets these users run the equivalent of physically isolated machines with separate levels of security clearance on the same workstation.

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Aileen Black, vice president of federal sales at VMware, said the company has been working with the NSA since 2000. HAP builds on the current solution based on VMware, called NetTop, which allows simultaneous access to classified information on the same platform in what the agency refers to as low-risk environments.

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HAP will allow for one system to maintain up to six simultaneous virtual machines. In addition to Windows and Linux, Black said support for Sun’s Solaris operating system is planned…

Read the whole article at source.

Quoting from the StorageCraft official announcement:

StorageCraft Technology Corporation, a provider of innovative disk-based backup, disaster recovery, data protection and security solutions for servers, desktops and laptops, today announced the release of StorageCraft ShadowProtect Server Edition 3.0 and ShadowProtect Desktop Edition 3.0, the latest versions of the award-winning ShadowProtect line of disk-based backup and disaster recovery software.

…ShadowProtect can migrate to new systems with tremendous flexibility – whether from a physical machine to another physical machine (P2P), a physical to a virtual machine (P2V), a virtual machine to another virtual machine (V2V) or even from a virtual machine to a physical machine (V2P). ShadowProtect Server Edition 3.0 and ShadowProtect Desktop Edition 3.0 support virtualization solutions, such as VMware platforms and Microsoft Virtual Server and Virtual PC, for quick and reliable disaster recovery, system migration and consolidation…

StorageCraft relationship with VMware in particular goes beyond commercial support, considering the company has licensed its Volume Snapshot Manager to VMware for inclusion in VMware Converter 3. Conversely VMware Converter 3 supports import of StorageCraft ShadowProtect images.

Parallels is preparing to release a Feature Update for its Desktop 3.

The new build (5144), which currently is in Release Candidate status, sports several GUI improvements, like capability to boot in Coherence Mode and Trasporter support for Linux PCs and VMs.

Enroll for the beta here.

MontanaLinux published a very long interview with OpenVZ Product Manager Kir Kolyshkin.

It doesn’t reveal anything new but clarifies relationship between OpenVZ and Virtuozzo development inside SWsoft.

Read it here.

Quoting from the Virtual Iron official announcement:

Virtual Iron Software, a provider of enterprise-class software for server virtualization and virtual infrastructure management, today announced that it has certified LeftHand Networks’ open iSCSI storage area network software…

LeftHand obtained compatibility certification also from VMware in February.

Quoting from the Egenera official announcement:

Egenera Inc., the data center virtualization company, today announced the appointment of Charles F. Kane to the company’s Board of Directors. Mr. Kane is the chief financial officer of One Laptop per Child (OLPC), a non-profit organization created to design, manufacture and distribute laptops that are sufficiently inexpensive to provide every child in the world access to knowledge and modern forms of education.

Prior to OLPC, Mr. Kane held CFO roles at RSA Security (acquired by EMC Corp.), Aspen Technology, and Informix Software (acquired by IBM Corp.). He also served as president and CEO of Corechange Inc. (acquired by Open Text Corp.), in addition to executive positions at Stratus Computer, Prime Computer and Deloitte and Touche. Mr. Kane is a CPA and a Senior Lecturer teaching International Finance at the Sloan Graduate School of Business at MIT…

virtualization.info has learned VMware is about to drastically reduce VMware Infrastructure 3 (aka ESX Server & VirtualCenter) price.

In September, possible with a launch at VMworld 2007, VMware will announce a new promotion called Foundation, bundling together three ESX Servers Started Edition and one VirtualCenter (capped to manage those three virtualization hosts) for $3,000.

This move will make harder compete for rivals XenSource (now acquired by Citrix) and Virtual Iron, which are focusing their marketing efforts in providing low cost alternatives to ESX Server.

Just last week virtualization.info published a brief analysis of how VMware strategy is slightly changing to address SMBs needs. This upcoming price reduction is part of that strategy and will possibly give VMware more market shares before Citrix and Microsoft arrival.

Update: VMware just confirmed this promotion through its corporate blog.

virtualization.info covered complex evolution of application virtualization startup Endeavors Technologies since it launched on the market a spin-off called Stream Theory.

After many lawsuits and loss of Stream Theory brand, Endeavors worked to build a new company image starting since June 2007, when hired its new CEO Peter Bondar.

Now the company is ready for its second step, pushing its technology in a new, uncommon way to clearly demonstrate benefits of application virtualization.

Endeavors launches Stream 24-7, a website allowing readers to use a virtual version of popular apllications like Blender, Paint.NET, Notepad++, OpenOffice, FileZilla, and many others.

Each application has been virtualized and will be streamed for free to any desktop visitors will browse from, after installing the Endeavors client called Application Player.

Stream 24-7 is powered by Endeavors AppExpress 3.0, which is also available as a trial on the company website.

For potential adopters this is probably one of the best ways to get capabilities of application virtualization and streaming. It really worths a visit.

Endeavors has been included in virtualization.info Virtualization Industry Radar.

Quoting from Barron’s:

CRT Capital’s Ashok Kumar offers a provocative take this morning about Citrix’s (CTXS) plan to take on VMware (VMW) in the virtualization market by acquiring XenSource for $500 million.

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Citrix’s acquisition of XenSource is an exploration of how a successful software company has underestimated the difficulties of entering a tangential market,” he writes. “Half a billion dollars is just the beginning of the investment Citrix will need to pull off its vision of a working system software ‘stack.’ Ironically, the ‘stack’ is meaningless to customers. VMware’s success has nothing to do with a stack, but instead on the opposite concept – widespread partnering.

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Kumar notes that Citrix has forecast that the XenSource business can grow to $50 million a year in revenue next year from $5 million this year; he thinks that “it should feel happy if it achieves $15 million.”…

Read the whole article at source.

Earlier this month virtualization.info disclosed features included in beta 1 of upcoming Virtual Infrastructure 3.1.0 (aka ESX Server 3.1 & VirtualCenter 2.1).

Later it revealed VMware decided to rename the suite as VMware Infrastructure 3.5.0 (aka ESX Server 3.5 & VirtualCenter 2.5).

Now virtualizaiton.info, thanks to its generous readers, is able to also disclose features included in just started beta 2.

Check the whole list at following links:

• Virtual Infrastructure 3.1 beta 1 feature set
• Virtual Infrastructure 3.5 beta 2 feature set