During the first day of VMworld 2013 in San Francisco VMware announced the release of vSphere 5.5 (the general availability has not yet been disclosed).
The elements introduced with 5.5 (thanks to Marcel van den Berg) are the following:
Year: 2013
Release: Proxmox VE 3.1
Proxmox Virtual Environment is an open source virtualization management solution that leverages KVM technologies.
This week Proxmox Server Solutions GmbH released version 3.1 of its platform introducing:
- New Enterprise Repository: PVE-Enterprise, that contains only stable updates and PVE-no-subscription intended for non-production servers.
- Updates via GUI: now all updates can be done from the GUI as well as CLI.
- SPICE (Simple Protocol for Independent Computing Environments): introduced as an alternative to VNC connection SPICE offloads most of the intensive CPU and GPU task to the client delivering better interaction experience with VMs.
- GlusterFS storage plugin: introduce the support of GlusterFS volumes.
HotLink announces DR Express, DR&CB solution to Amazon Web Services
This week HotLink announced the first disaster recovery and business continuity solution that leverages Amazon Web Services to protect VMware vSphere virtual machines: HotLink DR Express.
DR Express is a plug-in that extends VMware vCenter capabilities to integrate data protection and manage disaster recovery and business continuity to a remote site within Amazon Web Services.
HotLink DR Express is an economical to protect workloads that could not sustain the cost of a replica DR site, using, according to what HotLink declares, the best offerings for all public cloud providers: AWS EC2.
Matching this profitable capability, HotLink DR Express automatically uploads the initial VM to Amazon S3 along with the ongoing differentials according to the parameters configured within vCenter.
Release: Veeam Backup & Replication v7.0
Today Veeam Software announced the immediate availability of version 7. of its Backup & Replication product for VMware ESXi and Microsoft Hyper-V environments.
Among the more than 80 new features introduced, including VMware vCloud Director Integration and Self-Service Recovery of VMs and Guest Files, stand out:
- Built-in WAN Acceleration: specifically tuned for Veeam data transfers to offsite locations, determines what data blocks are already there and consequently optimize the amount of data transmitted on WAN connection. Delivered as a new WAN Accelerator role provides global caching, variable length dedupe, traffic compression, TCP/IP optimizations and resume on disconnect.
- Backup from Storage Snapshots: now introduced for VMware initially will support only certain HP storages can significantly improve companies RPOs leveraging on zero impact storage snapshot technologies.
Release: 7 new content pack for VMware vCenter Log Insight
VMware vCenter Log Insight is VMware’s tool for log analysis&aggregation launched in Open Beta this June.
Log Insight provides automated analytics of machine-generated log data helping to minimize troubleshooting times.
Thank to its marketplace, VMware’s technology partners CISCO, EMC, HyTrust, NetApp, NetFlow Logic, Puppet Labs and VCE were able to make available their content packs that span compute, storage, converged infrastructure, networking, security and compliance components that could typically be found in virtualized and cloud environments.
Video: HotLink Hybrid Express 2.0 for VMware vCenter
One of the latest release of a solution for deploying and managing hybrid on and off-premise resources using VMware vCenter or Microsoft SCVMM infrastructure is the HotLink Hybrid Express 2.0.
This video presents the solution which extends existing management platforms to public clouds, the product allows its users to use VMware vCenter or Microsoft SCVMM compatible orchestration tools, service catalogs, self-service portals and in-house workflows.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTt3K4Waq4Q[/youtube]
Microsoft Hyper-V in Windows Server 2012 R2 & System Center 2012 R2 to be GA on October 18
Today Brad Anderson, VP for Window Server & System Center, announced, through a blog post, that on October 18 2013 both Windows Server 2012 R2 (and consequently the new release of Hyper-V) and System Center 2012 R2 will be available for download to eligible customers.
For who had missed them here you can find a summary of the new features introduced in Hyper-V in Windows Server 2012 R2 and System Center 2012 R2.
VMware presents Reference Implementations series
On August 12, VMware announced the VMware Reference Implementations series which focus on actual customer environments. The objective of this Reference Implementations is to give an insider’s view of the architecture, together with VMware End-User Computing deployments case study from Global Service Provider.
VMware’s aim is to contribute in explaining to its customers how to get more benefits from VMware desktop virtualization products.