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virtualization.info Editors Trilead has released version 4.1 of its backup solution for Virtual Machines VM Explorer. VM Explorer Backups can be stored on ESX, Windows, Linux and FreeBSD based storage platforms or directly to a SAN. With the release of version 4 Trilead expanded support from VMware to Hyper-V as well, a trend we see with more vendors which traditionally provided VMware-ended solutions.
VM explorer is offered in a Free edition, and a Pro edition which of course has more features as detailed here.
In June last year, Simon Crosby at that time CTO of Citrix and Ian Pratt VP of Advanced Virtualization products at Citrix announced that they were leaving Citrix to start a new company called Bromium. More than a year later, Bromium released the first version of their vSentry product. Now Bromium has released version 1.1. as announced in a blog post today.
vSentry is a security product which uses a so called Microvisor which is a security-focused hypervisor that automatically, instantly and invisibly hardware-isolates each vulnerable Windows task in a micro-VM that cannot modify Windows or gain access to enterprise data or network infrastructure. The Microvisor uses the VT-x functionality from a system allowing tasks running on systems to run only with the strict low privilege rights needed, giving threats no chance to infiltrate the system. The product runs on top Windows XP and the 32 and 64 bit versions of Windows 7. Support for Mac OSX is expected in early 2013. It now also supports web based protection on Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) scenarios running on top of Microsoft Remote Desktop Services (RDS) and Citrix XenDesktop or VMware View and Bromium expects to evolve this functionality to all untrustworthy content and services.
VMware has released version 2.5 of its benchmarking framework VMmark. VMmark focuses on measuring the performance of the whole data center, including complex operations like manual and automated (or DRS-initated) vMotion, Storage vMotion, as well as virtual machines cloning and deployment.
Published VMmark results from vendors can be found on the VMware Benchmark Results page, which currently contains 35 entries. Beginning on January 8th 2013, any submission of benchmark results must use the VMmark 2.5 benchmark kit.
HP has released a paper titled: "HP VirtualSystem VS2 for Red Hat". The paper which contains 39 pages contains a reference architecture for building a Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV) environment on HP Converged Infrastructure with integrated management.
The VS2 RA solution is built on HP Converged Infrastructure, including the HP BladeSystem architecture, HP Virtual Connect Flex-10, and HP LeftHand P4800 SAN Solution for BladeSystem.
Dell has released a new paper titled: "vStart 1000m for Enterprise Virtualization using Hyper-V: Reference Architecture". The paper which contains 34 pages describes a validated reference architecture for running Hyper-V on top of the vStart 1000m infrastructure solution, which is a solution which is available to be partially racked, cabled, and delivered to the customer site, to speed deployment.
The solution includes Dell PowerEdgeTM M620 blade servers, Dell Compellent Storage, Dell Force10 network switches, Brocade Fibre Channel switches, Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Datacenter Edition with Hyper-V Role enabled, and two Dell PowerEdge R620 servers that manage the solution by hosting Dell management tools and optionally, System Center 2012 System Center Virtual Machine Manager or other System Center 2012 components.
Besides releasing Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV) version 3.1 last week, Red Hat also announced the beta of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) version 6.4. This version will be the follow up of version 6.3 which was released in June this year.
Version 6.4 will provide out-of-the-box support for the Hyper-V paravirtualized drivers allowing RHEL to run as a guest on the Microsoft Hyper-V platform. Microsoft already provided these drivers, but now they will be included in the distribution by Red Hat.
Version 6.4 will provide new functionality for Installation, Kernel, Device Drivers, Networking, Authentication and Interoperability, Security, Entitlement, Virtualization, Clustering, Storage, Compiler and Tools and will also contain General Updates as described in the release notes.
Solarwinds has released version 5.1 of its virtualization management product Virtualization Manager. This version is the follow-up of version 5.0 which was released in April this year. Virtualization Manager is the product which Solarwinds acquired when it acquired a company called Hyper9 in January 2011.
Virtualization Manager delivers integrated VMware and Microsoft Hyper-V capacity planning, performance monitoring, VM sprawl control, configuration management, and chargeback automation.
Red Hat has released version 3.1 of its Enterprise Virtualization product. Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV) is Red Hats virtualization platform based on the Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) hypervisor. Version 3.1 is the follow-up of version 3.0 which was released in January 2012.
Version 3.1 adds the following new features (among others):
HP has released a paper titled: HP VirtualSystem VS2 for Microsoft. The paper which contains 23 pages details HPs reference architecture for the Microsoft Private Cloud Fast Track. The Cloud Fast Track was developed and executed in partnership with six OEMs: Dell, Fujitsu, Hitachi/HDS, HP, IBM and NEC and announced in November 2010. It provides reference architectures for private Hyper-V powered Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) clouds.
The VS2 Reference Architecture provides a foundation for building a high-performance Microsoft Hyper-V virtualization platform that has been optimized to consolidate and provision hundreds to thousands of workloads while providing extremely high availability at all levels – from the underlying network and storage fabrics up to the virtual machine (VM) layer.
Virsto, the Californian company founded 2007, provider of storage hypervisor software for virtual machines announced yesterday December 4 the release the new version of Virsto for vSphere 2.0
The virtual storage solution now integrates support for both Citrix XenDesktop and VMware View, improved high availability (HA) capabilities and workflow optimisations.