virtualization.info Editors

NEC announces virtual switch for Microsoft Hyper-V

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Since the latest release of Hyper-V (version 3) as part of Windows Server 2012, Microsoft supports adding third party virtual switches. Cisco already announced that its Nexus virtual switch would be supported on Hyper-V as well. Now NEC has announced the release and general availability of the ProgrammableFlow PF1000 virtual switch for Microsoft Hyper-V.

The ProgrammableFlow Controller is Open SDN software for virtualizing and automating networks, supporting the OpenStack Folsom and OpenFlow protocol. Ideally suited for corporate and service provider data centers, ProgrammableFlow Controller provides virtual L2 and L3 networks with Quality of Service (QoS) and IPv6 support across an OpenFlow enabled switch fabric.

Paper: Citrix XenServer Design: Configuring Multipathing for XenServer

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Citrix has release a paper titled:”Citrix XenServer Design: Configuring Multipathing for XenServer“. The paper which contains 66 pages helps readers to understand how to configure multipathing for XenServer. It addresses the following topics: Overview of XenServer Multipathing, Instructions on how to configure a Software Initiator iSCSI, Host Bus Adapter iSCSI and Fibre Channel protocol multipathing and also provides some troubleshooting information.

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Paper: The CPU Scheduler in VMware vSphere 5.1

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VMware has released a paper titled: “The CPU Scheduler in VMware vSphere 5.1“. The paper which contains 26 pages provides detailed explanations of ESXi CPU scheduling policies to help vSphere users who want to understand how virtual machines are scheduled.

The CPU scheduler is an essential component of vSphere 5.x. All workloads running in a virtual machine must be scheduled for execution and the CPU scheduler handles this task with policies that maintain fairness, throughput, responsiveness, and scalability of CPU resources.

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Release: CiRBA 7.2

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CiRBA has announced the release of version 7.2 of its Data Center Intelligence (DCI) solution. Control Console is one of the components of its Data Center Intelligence (DCI) solution, providing Control and Automation. The CiRBA Control Console is provided for VMware, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization and IBM PowerVM running on AIX. CiRBA also provides a Transformation tool which helps modeling server and data center transformations. Both the Control Console and the Transformation tool leverage the CiRBA’s Analytics Engine.

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Release: HotLink SuperVISOR for VMware vCenter 2.0

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HotLink has released version 2.0 of its multi virtualization platform management tool SuperVISOR. This version is the follow up of version 1.5 which was released in April last year. SuperVISOR is software which abstracts the virtualization platform from the management tools used to manage them. By using this technology it is possible to manage a hybrid hypervisor environment using a single management tool solution running within VMware vCenter. SuperVISOR is able to manage Microsoft Hyper-V, Citrix XenServer and Red Hat Enterprise Linux KVM.

When HotLink announced its product for the first time, it also mentioned that it would supply a plugin for Microsoft’s System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM). Since Microsoft’s latest version of SCVMM now already supports multiple virtualization solutions, apparently HotLink decided to stop the efforts to offer a solution for SCVMM.

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Release: Oracle VM 3.2

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Oracle has released version 3.2 of its enterprise virtualization solution. Oracle has rebranded the until now separate releases of Oracle VM Server for x86 and Oracle VM Server for SPARC into a new combined release Oracle VM. From this release forward Oracle VM Manager can now manage both Oracle VM server running on x86 and VM Server running on SPARC based servers.

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Cisco invests in Parallels

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On January 17 Parallels announced that Cisco has made a not yet quantified equity investment in the company.

Parallels, well known for its desktop virtualization software, said that the investment is intended to accelerate costumer adoption of Parallels cloud service delivery products in synergy with Cisco cloud and data center solutions.

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Paper: Project Virtual Reality Check Phase V

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Sven Huisman, technical consultant at PQR, Dennis Geerlings, Consultant at Login VSI, Jeroen van de Kamp, Enterprise Architect and CTO at Login Consultants and Ruben Spruijt, Technology Officer at PQR just announced a new paper titled: Project VRC: Phase V Antivirus impact and best practices on VDI. The paper which contains 80 pages gives some valuable insight on the impact of using Antivirus solutions in a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) environment.

The tests were conducted using the following products: Microsoft System Center Endpoint Protection (ForeFront), McAfee Enterprise, Move Multiplatform, Move Agentless and Symantec Endpoint protection.

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Release: Dell vOPS Server Explorer 6.3

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Dell today released version 6.3 of Dell vOPS Server Explorer. vOPS Server Explorer originally developed by VKernel provided assessment tooling for virtualization administrators. VKernel was acquired by Quest in November 2011, and since Quest now owned by DELL, VKernel assets are now part of DELL as well. vOPS Server Explorer is delivered as a fully configured virtual machine, which can be installed on either VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V, or Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization.

Version 6.3 of vOPS Server Explorer, which is provided as freeware adds two new utilities, Storage Explorer and Change Explorer. Dell also provides a paid version called vOPS Server Standard providing additonional value with capacity and performance monitoring capabilities. Environment Explorer now also displays VM Density, Zombie VMs, Rightsizing savings and Changes.

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