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Microsoft has released another free eBook titled:"Microsoft System Center: Troubleshooting Configuration Manager", this book covers the design, deployment, and troubleshooting some of the most complex and mission critical aspects of key System Center capabilities.
The book covers the following topics:
Software defined storage (SDS) is hot. Today Maxta came out of stealth mode and presented the world their software defined storage solution for VMware vSphere which looks like a perfect mix of VMware Virtual SAN and Nutanix capabilities. No SAN or NAS needed but resilient local storage for caching (consumergrade SDD) and persistent storage (HDD). Through its software-only solution, Maxta turns standard servers into a converged compute and storage solution
While the Maxta Storage Platform has been running for over a year in production now at an undisclosed number of customer sites, untill today the company did not do a lot of marketing. The current version of Maxta Storage Platform or MxSP is 2.2.3.
This skepticism about SDS was part of the reason why Maxta has kept under the radar since its 2009 start. Maxta decided not to announce the company until it had technology validation, and market validation.
The launch of NSX by VMware drove a lot of attentions on network virtualization one of the key elements to achieve the SDDC (Software-Defined Data Center) goal.
Cumulus Networks announced today that its Open Network Install Environment (ONIE) has been formally accepted by the Open Compute Prject (OCP) outlining an approach to the integration of hardware and software (in this case the OS) on network appliances, on a different side, but complementary to VMware.
Of course ONIE is not a network virtualization technology, and Cumulus Networks is a VMware partner that supports NSX, but the company is working on a different front than other vendors who are also facing virtualization’s incursion in the network world.
The ONIE open source project, endorsed from several names in networking industry like Agema, Big Switch Networks, Broadcom, Edge-Core Networks, Mellanox Technologies, Penguin Computing and Quanta, provides a boot loader for installing software on bare metal ODM network switches as well as the upcoming OCP Network Switch design specification, the objective is to allow customers to freely choose a combination of compatible hardware and network operating system.
VMware has made available for download a poster providing a network diagram and reference sheet for Horizon View 5.2.
The network diagram provides an overview of which ports are used between components in the internal, DMZ and external network and shows how the different components communicate with each other. The Reference Sheet provides an overview of source and target including ports and protocol being used.
VMware has made available for download a poster titled:”VMware vSphere 5 Memory Management and Monitoring diagram“. The VMware vSphere 5 Memory Management and Monitoring diagram provides a comprehensive look into the ESXi memory management mechanisms and reclamation methods. This diagram also provides the relevant monitoring components in vCenter Server and the troubleshooting tools like ESXTOP.
Following the last release in July Citrix announced version 5.4 of its all-in-one VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) soultion VDI-in-a-Box.
The major features introduced, leveraging the same technology of XenDesktop 7.1, are the support for Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V and VMware ESXi 5.5 (and related vSphere implementations) in addition to Windows 8.1 as virtual desktop guest OS.
OpenStack Summit 2013 is coming to its end and in the last few days we have read and written extensively on OpenStack Framework realizing that very often we feel a lack of actual implementation examples.
This video, published from VMware on its official YouTube channel, shows the integration capabilities between a vSphere infrastructure and the OpenStack framework by deploying a single instance of vSphere OpenStack Virtual Appliance (not officially supported from VMware) as the OpenStack cloud controller onto a vSphere 5.5 infrastructure.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Leaxe-DiJc[/youtube]
We talked several time about HyTrust, based in Moutain View CA and provider of Cloud Security Automation (CSA) solutions.
In august they raised $18.5M in Series C funding from Intel Capital and Fortinet, among others and now they have announced the acquisition of HighCloud Security well known for its encryption and key management services.
VMware has released version 5 of its application virtualization product ThinApp. With the release VMware announced that the product lifecycle has been extended to 5 years.
ThinApp is available as a standalone product and part of all Horizon bundles and the Horizon Suite. Since this is a major release, customers must also fulfill their subscription and receive new license keys along with the download of the bits at My VMware.