virtualization.info Editors

Catbird is a well-known security player in the virtualization market with its vSecurity product able to proactively secure the virtual network and guest operating systems by analyzing and responding to network events and attack, and enforcing correct VM configuration automatically mapping to industry-standard compliance frameworks such PCI, HIPAA, FISMA and COBIT.

vSecurity for Microsoft Hyper-V, whose release is planned for December 2013, will support Hyper-V Server 2012, SP1 and R2 and promises the same functionalities now provided to VMware vSphere and ESX users.

The solution will be delivered with two components: a web management console, providing policy definition, visualization and workflow on a logical zone basis, called Catbird Control Center and a virtual machine appliance to be deployed for each virtual switch or hypervisor.

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5nine has released a free version of its 5nine Security product, called 5nine Security for Microsoft Hyper-V with built-in Security and Compliance Scanner v1.0. 5nine Security for Hyper-V Free provides a host-based / agent-less security solution for virtual machines running on top of Hyper-V. The product is also availble in paid versions (Standard and Datacenter editions) which ofcourse provide more functionality, as detailed in this product comparison.

The solution provides anti-virus and anti-mailware scanning for hosts and virtual machines, a virtual firewall, and control over each VM – which are controlled using a centralized management console, via PowerShell of via WCF APIs. The built-in Security and Compliance Scanner will help you to investigate present and potential security problems on your server. It also performs an aggressive anti-malware scan on a server during the overall scanning process. Upon scan completion Security and Compliance Scanner provides detailed reports on each identified security issue.

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vCenter Orchestrator plug-in for vCloud Director 5.5 allows access to vCloud Director’s functionalities and API to be used in vCenter Orchestrator, VMware’s workflow automation platform.

This new release has its main purpose in the complete support for vCloud Director 5.5 but also introduces new features such the enhanced performances of the object finder methods, the possibility to configure the cache timeout through the plug-in settings, the ability for Cloud administrators to automate the management of vApp and VM snapshots through the scripting objects of the plug-in and a couple of bug fixes.

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Veeam has released an update for version 7 of its Backup & Replication product for VMware ESXi and Microsoft Hyper-V which was released in August this year. The product is therefore the first backup product to support both vSphere 5.5. and Hyper-V 2012 R2.

The update, which Veeam versions as R2 provides the following new features:

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Last month Gartner released a paper titled:"How to Choose between Hyper-V and vSphere". The paper written by Thomas J. Bittman, is made available for free viewing by Microsoft, which actually tells something about the outcome of the paper already.

The paper covers acquisition costs, ease of management including operational complexity and cost and also covers functionality richness of both the VMware and Microsoft virtualization platform solutions.

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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:

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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