virtualization.info Editors

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.
…
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:

• Product Evaluation
• Getting Started
• Deployment
• Operations
• Technical Reference

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:

• Shared Folders support for Windows 2000 guests
• Host-Only networking
• Custom video resolution support
• Image tool
• Autoupdate

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.
…
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.
…
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.

Virtugo is a young virtualization startup actually focusing on providing utilization and performance enhancements to VMware ESX Server.

Quoting from the Virtugo official announcement:

Virtugo Software, Inc. the leading provider of performance management and optimization tools for the virtual environment, announces the immediate availability of VirtualSuite r5.2.
…
Introductions today include:

• PerformLite 5.2
  Addressing one of the most challenging issues facing IT organizations today with virtual environments “How do I asses the performance of my virtual environment?”. IT organizations want a simple and quick way of understanding how the VMware ESX environment is performing
• Perform 5.2
  Delivering a performance management tool specifically designed to enable IT organizations the ability to discover, monitor, and maintain the vital statistics of the virtualized environment. Perform incorporates host server and virtual machine knowledge to show real-time, and historical variables such as CPU, memory, and disk usage within a comprehensive user interface, allowing administrators to graph and report on those vital statistics.
• Optimize 5.2
  Extending the virtual environment by automatically tuning your virtual environment to enhance application performance. By dynamically adjusting CPU, memory, and disk resource allocations in real time the virtual environment can handle more work while decreasing application response time. Optimize was designed to maximize utilization and increase productivity of existing systems, thus enabling companies to dynamically manage workloads to ensure business priorities are met.
• Connect 5.2 for Microsoft Operations Manager
  Enabling IT organizations to marry information about the virtual environment with the information about the physical server environment. Connect provides the conduit in getting all the vital statistics from the virtual environment into a MOM. Connect monitors the virtual servers to allow for quick problem identification, notification and correction, and provides tasks to automate and perform routine operations.

Look at the demo or download it here.

The virtualization.info Virtualization Industry Roadmap has been updated accordingly.

Sun just launched a very interesting tool for managing server consolidation on Sun Fire T1000 and T2000 platforms with Solaris 10 Containers:

The Consolidation Tool for Sun Fire Servers V1.0, Sun Fire T1000 and T2000 Edition, is a software tool designed to simplify the task of consolidating multiple applications onto the Sun Fire T1000 or T2000 platform. In particular, this software allows the easy definition and creation of Solaris Containers.

The tool deploys applications into processor sets where appropriate and allocates CPUs into processor sets in a way that optimizes performance.

The software also takes full advantage of Solaris Containers (including Solaris Zones partitioning technology, pools, psets, and scheduling classes), making intelligent choices between full-root and sparse zones.

Features provided:

• Captures customer’s workload consolidation requirements
• Builds resource pools, psets, and Solaris Zones
• Deploys a short list of public domain applications into Solaris Zones
• Provides a report summarizing the deployment

A PDF presentation is available for further features details.

Download it here.

The virtualization.info Virtualization Industry Roadmap has been updated accordingly.

Thanks to Phillip Fayers for the news.

Quoting from the Akimbi official announcement:

Akimbi Systems, the global leader in Virtual Lab Automation software, today announced its 25th Akimbi Slingshot customer, an achievement realized just six months after the company’s launch in September 2005.

The acquisition of customers – including Coldwater Creek, RSA Security, Juniper Networks, Scientific Technologies (STC) and others – combined with the company’s recent build out of more than 25 channel partners in its global distribution network, reinforces Akimbi’s position as the market share leader in Virtual Lab Automation, a new class of infrastructure software that leverages and enhances the capabilities of virtualization platforms from VMware and Microsoft…