Virtualization Articles
For many organizations, data is not only crossing into the hundreds of terabytes, but into the near-petabyte (PB) and multi-petabyte range. In a new survey sponsored by Oracle and conducted by Unisphere Research among members of the Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG), "The Petabyte Challenge: 2011 IOUG Database Growth Survey," close to one out of 10 respondents report that the total amount of online (disk-resident) data they manage today - taking into account all clones, snapshots, replicas and backups - tops a petabyte.
Posted September 07, 2011
At an event for customers, partners and industry experts in Redwood Shores that was also presented live online, Oracle announced Oracle VM 3.0, the latest release of its server virtualization and management solution. According to the company, Oracle VM 3.0 is suitable for all data center workloads and features new policy-based management capabilities, advanced storage management via the Oracle VM Storage Connect plug-in API; centralized network configuration management, improved ease-of-use and Open Virtualization Format (OVF) support.
Posted September 07, 2011
At the recent VMworld conference, Symantec Corp. announced new enhancements to Backup Exec 2010 designed to provide greater visibility into physical and virtual environments with a single backup solution.
Posted September 06, 2011
NEC Corporation of America (NEC), a provider and integrator of advanced communications, networking and IT solutions, announced that its NEC Express5800/R320b fault-tolerant servers, which are powered by the six-core Intel Xeon processor 5600 series, now support VMware vSphere for virtualization.
Posted September 06, 2011
At VMworld 2011 yesterday, VMware, Inc. announced a new database provisioning and operations solution designed to deliver a database as a service model for the enterprise. Described as an extension of VMware's Cloud Application Platform strategy, VMware vFabric Data Director aims to give IT the ability to control and manage a growing set of heterogeneous databases through policy-based automation, while streamlining application development via a self-service provisioning model for developers to rapidly access the database services needed for modern applications. Built on VMware vSphere, vFabric Data Director will also extend the benefits of virtualized infrastructures to the database tier, optimizing resource utilization for increased operational efficiency and cost savings.
Posted August 30, 2011
Virtualization is such a broad term and a hot topic among IT professionals. However, just because your organization has conquered server virtualization, or is well underway with confidence, if you proceed with the same desktop virtualization practices, you will be setting yourself up for failure.
Posted August 29, 2011
Composite Software announced that Carfax, the vehicle history expert, has developed and deployed a data abstraction layer using the Composite Data Virtualization Platform that will provide the company greater agility in managing its rapidly changing reporting environment. The first deployment consisted of publishing logical views to support reporting for the company's finance, sales, marketing and business development organizations.
Posted August 23, 2011
Gluster, a provider of scale-out, open source storage solutions, has introduced the Gluster Connector for OpenStack, which provides scalable and highly-available VM storage functionality for OpenStack. "The Gluster Connector for OpenStack enhances the storage options that are available for OpenStack," John Kreisa, vice president of marketing at Gluster, tells 5 Minute Briefing. By enabling users of the OpenStack framework to now use GlusterFS as the primary storage model, OpenStack users can have both file and object in one common storage model, explains Kreisa.
Posted July 29, 2011
CA Technologies has announced a definitive agreement to acquire Watchmouse B.V. (WatchMouse), a provider of SaaS-based monitoring for cloud, mobile and traditional web applications. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. "As companies extend more applications to their customers through the web and smartphones, the performance of those applications is having a greater impact on revenue, customer loyalty and brand value," says David Dobson, executive vice president, CA Technologies.
Posted July 29, 2011
There is no doubt that virtualization is radically changing the shape of IT infrastructure, transforming the way applications are deployed and services delivered. Databases are among the last of the tier 1 applications to be hosted on virtual servers, but the past year has seen a huge wave of increase for production Oracle, SQL Server and other databases on VMware platforms. For all the benefits of virtualization, including cost-effectiveness, there are some impacts on the IT staff involved. Unfortunately for the DBAs virtualization often means losing control and visibility of their systems, which can ultimately hinder their ability to deliver database-oriented business solutions. While in the past DBAs had perfect visibility to the physical servers hosting the databases, the virtualization layers and the tools to manage them are typically out of bounds to them. While all the excitement of late has centered on VMware and other virtual machine systems, the DBAs have a valid reason for skepticism.
Posted July 27, 2011
HP is offering a series of new software solutions designed to improve collaboration among application development and delivery teams. The new HP ALM software solutions include HP Service Virtualization 1.0, HP Application Lifecycle Intelligence (ALI), and HP Agile Accelerator 5.0. "Without a performance management system, it's difficult to measure success," Matthew Morgan, senior director of worldwide product marketing at HP Software, said at a press and blogger briefing at launch day for the product line. Application metrics "should be digitized and automated, and not sit on an Excel desktop."
Posted July 25, 2011
Oracle has announced Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.1. The latest release provides capabilities to increase the usability and flexibility of the product by introducing a new virtual machine cloning facility, enhanced large system support, improved remote access, and expanded platform and application support. "By significantly enhancing the world's most popular cross-platform virtualization software for the second time within a year, Oracle is clearly demonstrating its commitment to both the desktop virtualization market and the open source community," said Wim Coekaerts, senior vice president, Linux and Virtualization Engineering, Oracle.
Posted July 20, 2011
BMC Software and Unisys Corporation have formed a joint initiative to deliver and manage advanced cloud solutions. The two companies are basing their joint solutions on BMC's second-generation Cloud Lifecycle Management (CLM) offering combined with Unisys' cloud advisory, implementation and management services portfolio. The BMC and Unisys initiative will address strategy, planning, design, implementation and operational management of cloud computing solutions to make it possible for customers to realize both immediate and long-term business value through a disciplined approach to cloud computing.
Posted July 15, 2011
A longtime supporter of Linux and open source technologies, IBM has also become a leading proponent of Linux Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) and is a founding member of the recently-formed Open Virtualization Alliance. With 2011 marking IBM's centennial, as well as the 20th anniversary of Linux, Jean Staten Healy, director for Cross-IBM Linux and Open Virtualization, reflects on the ways each has contributed to the other, and the promise offered now by open virtualization to help customers ensure cost efficiency and avoid vendor lock-in in virtualized environments. "As it happened with Linux, the need for virtualization technology will continue to grow, and open virtualization solutions based on KVM will become more and more important to customers looking for choice and cost benefits," Staten Healy observes.
Posted July 13, 2011
A longtime supporter of Linux and open source technologies, IBM has also become a leading proponent of Linux Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) and is a founding member of the recently-formed Open Virtualization Alliance. With 2011 marking IBM's centennial, as well as the 20th anniversary of Linux, Jean Staten Healy, director for Cross-IBM Linux and Open Virtualization, reflects on the ways each has contributed to the other, and the promise offered now by open virtualization to help customers ensure cost efficiency and avoid vendor lock-in in virtualized environments. "As it happened with Linux, the need for virtualization technology will continue to grow, and open virtualization solutions based on KVM will become more and more important to customers looking for choice and cost benefits," Staten Healy observes.
Posted July 13, 2011
CA Technologies announced a definitive agreement to acquire privately-held Interactive TKO, Inc. (ITKO), a provider of service simulation solutions for developing applications in composite and cloud environments, for $330 million in an all-cash transaction. "The addition of ITKO to CA Technologies will extend our ability to deliver a complete set of capabilities to help our customers and partners to increase their adoption and value from cloud-based applications," says David Dobson, executive vice president, Customer Solutions Group, CA Technologies.
Posted July 11, 2011
Oracle has announced the first Oracle VM Template for MySQL Enterprise Edition. The aim of the new Oracle VM Template for MySQL is to help eliminate manual configuration efforts and risks by providing a pre-installed, pre-configured and certified software stack that includes Oracle VM Server for x86, Oracle Linux with the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel and MySQL Enterprise Edition. "By using the Oracle VM Template for MySQL Enterprise Edition, organizations do not have to spend the time downloading, installing, configuring and testing all the components together before deploying in production," an Oracle spokesperson tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted July 06, 2011
Symantec Corp. has introduced the latest version of Symantec ApplicationHA, Symantec's high availability solution for VMware virtual environments that supports customers' ability to virtualize their business-critical applications. As customers move from virtualizing peripheral applications to more core mission-critical apps, virtualization adoption declines because they tend to be more cautious and risk-averse, Don Angspatt, vice president of product management for Symantec's Storage and Availability Management Group, tells 5 Minute Briefing. "No one wants to stake their career on whether SQL, Oracle, SAP, and Exchange can be running all the time and be up all the time in a virtualized environment."
Posted June 27, 2011
Composite Software has introduced Composite 6, a new version of its flagship data virtualization software that provides "big data" integration support for the Cloudera Distribution including Apache Hadoop (CDH), IBM Netezza and HP Vertica data sources. In addition, Composite 6, which is now completing beta test and will be commercially available in July, includes performance optimizations, cache enhancements, new data governance capabilities and ease-of-use features. "Data virtualization is emerging as an ideal solution for managing today's complex data integration challenges," says Jim Green, CEO for Composite Software.
Posted June 24, 2011
QueplixCorp., a provider of data integration and data management products, has introduced the new Data Quality Manager for QueCloud, enabling companies to create and maintain data consistency throughout the data migration, integration and management lifecycle with a single cloud-based platform. As a central component of the QueCloud dashboard, Data Quality Manager is tightly coupled with the solution's core data integration and data management functionality.
Posted June 21, 2011
Talend, a developer and distributor of open source middleware, has announced Talend Cloud, a cloud-enabled integration platform that provides a unified integration platform for on-premise systems, cloud-based systems and SaaS applications. Based on Talend's Unified Integration Platform, it also provides a common environment for users to manage the entire lifecycle of integration processes including a graphical development environment, a deployment mechanism and runtime environment for operations and a monitoring console for management - all built on top of a shared metadata repository.
Posted June 21, 2011
Oracle VM Server for SPARC 2.1 delivers live migration capabilities to the SPARC T-series server family, including SPARC T3, UltraSPARC T2 Plus and UltraSPARC T2 based servers, allowing customers to quickly migrate running domains from one physical server to another, eliminating application outages and server downtime. In addition, Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center Virtualization Management Pack provides full lifecycle management of Oracle VM Server for SPARC.
Posted June 15, 2011
Confio Software, maker of the Ignite8 performance analysis software tool, has introduced IgniteVM, targeted specifically at DBAs to monitor and ensure database performance in a VMware environment. IgniteVM provides visibility beyond the database and into the virtual server layers, reducing the risk of database performance issues and helping to enable a successful physical to virtual (P2V) transition. With IgniteVM, which is focused squarely on the DBA and the DBA management team, Confio aims to reduce risk and increase visibility by combining the essential database response monitoring available in Confio's Ignite8 tool with non-intrusive VMware visibility.
Posted June 15, 2011
Composite Software has announced the certification of its flagship data virtualization product, the Composite Information Server, with MicroStrategy 9. MicroStrategy's business intelligence software enables companies to analyze the volumes of data stored across their enterprise to make better business decisions. In addition to the certification, Composite Software has also signed a global marketing alliance agreement with MicroStrategy, which includes a range of joint marketing programs. "In a time of extreme business change, business users need agile approaches to information," says Robert Eve, executive vice president of marketing of Composite Software.
Posted May 31, 2011
The service management world of today is all about linking business services to the underlying IT infrastructure, creating an effective bridge between the business and technology. In theory, this provides a clear window into the IT environment to increase accountability, productivity and efficiency. Effective service management also provides business context, so IT can take action to avert service-impacting events by understanding business priority. However, current business service management (BSM) does not provide enough guidance about how to manage services proactively and effectively. This issue is now more important than ever, because on the horizon lurks an exciting new arena for service management-virtualization and cloud computing.
Posted May 25, 2011
Oracle has announced Sun Ray Software 5.2. The latest release of Oracle's server-hosted desktop software is intended to be simpler to install and configure, and features improved video, audio, smart card, Virtual Private Network (VPN), and network resiliency. Sun Ray Software is part of Oracle's desktop-to-data center virtualization portfolio, enabling customers to virtualize and manage their full software and hardware stack, from applications to disk.
Posted May 12, 2011
MicroStrategy Inc., a provider of business intelligence software, announced it has begun shipping the latest release of its BI platform, which includes data visualization capabilities. MicroStrategy 9.2 includes a feature called Visual Insight, which is designed to allow business people to answer business questions on their own, avoiding the lengthy process of report specification and design. Users can access data from a full spectrum of data stores, ranging from massive enterprise data warehouses, to distributed departmental databases, to financial databases, to data that resides on the individual's desktop computer and in Excel spreadsheets.
Posted April 26, 2011
Unisys has announced its Unisys Hybrid Enterprise framework, a comprehensive methodology and set of services for helping organizations manage multiple IT delivery models - both traditional and cloud-based - within a consistent computing environment managed as a single entity.
Posted April 11, 2011
With the annual Oracle users conference COLLABORATE about to begin, Andy Flower, president of the IOUG, spoke with 5 Minute Briefing about the IOUG's strong areas of focus in terms of overall conference content, and how the addition of the MySQL user base into the Oracle community is evolving. Citing a MySQL keynote, 75 sessions at COLLABORATE focused on MySQL, and a new MySQL Council headed by Sarah Novotny, Flower says the IOUG is making strides in giving voice to the MySQL community within the IOUG and setting a stage for positive interaction with Oracle.
Posted April 06, 2011
UC4, an IT automation provider, has announced a new line of IT automation tools that supports a range of environments across enterprises. The company simultaneously announced it is shipping ONE Automation, a new solution for cross-platform automation, along with UC4 Automation Platform version 9, designed to provide end-to-end enterprise automation.
Posted March 29, 2011
Queplix Corp., a provider of data virtualization solutions, has announced two new product families to bring the benefits of data virtualization to ETL (extract, transform and load). According to Queplix, the VirtualETL and CloudETL families simplify the ETL process, enabling users to configure Queplix's Application Software Blades, providing easy connections to target applications and reducing the time required to integrate applications.
Posted March 23, 2011
CiRBA Inc. says it is shipping a new release of its data center intelligence software, designed to provide IT organizations with "fully-loaded utilization," a new metric for measuring the infrastructure efficiency. CiRBA Version 6.1's fully-loaded utilization feature provides a precise and simultaneous measurement of server infrastructure requirements that factors in utilization patterns, technical constraints and business and operational policies. Leveraging this measure, organizations can identify exactly how much infrastructure is required to safely service workloads, allowing excess capacity to be accurately measured and reclaimed for other purposes, according to the vendor. According to Andrew Hillier, co-founder and CTO of CiRBA, data centers can face challenges in understanding how efficiently and how well utilized their IT and virtualized environments are running. This is because they tend to rely solely on traditional measurements such as CPU utilization, I/O rates and other measurements. But these can be misleading, he says.
Posted March 21, 2011
The recent public release of thousands of leaked U.S. State Department cables by WikiLeaks continues to shake up governments across the world. The information captured and sent out to the wild is not only an embarrassment to U.S. government officials whose candid assessments of foreign leaders were exposed but also to the fact that that the organization with the tightest and most comprehensive data security technologies, protocols, and policies in the world unknowingly fell victim to a massive data breach. Can private corporations or smaller government agencies with less-stringent security protocols and standards expect to do any better? Securing data is tough enough, and now, with the increase of initiatives such as virtualization and cloud computing, the odds of loss of control and proliferation of sensitive data become even greater.
Posted March 09, 2011
Queplix Corp., a provider of data virtualization solutions, has announced two new product families to bring the benefits of data virtualization to ETL (extract, transform and load). According to Queplix, the VirtualETL and CloudETL families simplify the ETL process, enabling users to configure Queplix's Application Software Blades, providing easy connections to target applications and reducing the time required to integrate applications. The VirtualETL family includes enterprise-class VirtualETL, which allows ETL teams to connect any two enterprise applications together, and professional-class VirtualETL, which allows users to connect any two applications that use relational database management systems. With CloudETL, users can connect any two cloud-based applications or connect a cloud-based application with one that is on-premise.
Posted March 02, 2011
Composite Software, a data virtualization vendor, says it is joining with Clarity Resource Group, a business intelligence (BI) consulting firm, to offer data virtualization products and services that increase BI agility in financial services, communications, retail, health care and energy industries.
Posted March 01, 2011
The SHARE conference convenes on February 27th in Anaheim, with an agenda packed with industry initiatives and knowledge-sharing on the latest best practices and technology trends. In this Q&A, SHARE president Janet Sun provides her vision for the IBM users group in the coming years. "We see the mainframe as the center of the enterprise IT universe. If you don't think so, try unplugging it," says Sun. "Our organization focuses on enterprise IT, and that includes the mainframe. Today's SHARE membership continues to strive to leverage advances in information technology, and SHARE is a great place to do that."
Posted February 23, 2011
FalconStor Software, a provider of data protection solutions, is now offering a disaster recovery (DR) automation tool as part of its FalconStor Continuous Data Protector (CDP) product line.
Posted February 22, 2011
SHARE convenes on February 27th in Anaheim, with an agenda packed with industry initiatives and knowledge-sharing on the latest best practices and technology trends. In this exclusive Q&A, SHARE president Janet Sun provides her vision for SHARE in the coming years.
Posted February 22, 2011
Queplix Corp., a provider of data virtualization solutions, has introduced a virtual migration platform that enables users to rapidly migrate data from one application to another. The product, Queplix Virtual Migration Manager, is a new module of the Queplix Virtual Data Manager platform, and can reduce migration time from months to days, the vendor says. "Virtual Migration Manager uses the power of data virtualization to supercharge the ETL process," Michael Zuckerman, CMO of Queplix, tells 5 Minute Briefing. "We do this by eliminating much of the time and programming effort, and greatly simplifying the use of the Virtual Migration Manager toolset. Our object dashboard enables users to integrate multiple sources rapidly, relational, object or XML, and see them all converted into one view in a single dashboard."
Posted February 15, 2011
HP announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Vertica, a privately held, real-time analytics platform company based in Billerica, Mass. According to HP, the acquisition will enhance its capabilities for information optimization, adding sophisticated, real-time business analytics for large and complex sets of data in physical, virtual and cloud environments. Vertica's platform aims to help customers analyze massive amounts of data quickly, resulting in "just-in-time" business intelligence.
Posted February 15, 2011
Vormetric, a provider of enterprise system encryption solutions, plans to announce tomorrow Vormetric Data Security for Amazon EC2, which enables organizations to remotely apply and manage transparent file-level encryption on data in Amazon EC2 (elastic compute cloud) environments. Vormetric has seen a surge in customer interest in leveraging cloud-based services, Gretchen Hellman, vice president of marketing and product management, Vormetric, tells 5 Minute Briefing. "The cost benefit and the IT agility benefits of the cloud are completely apparent, and so the question is: Why aren't more enterprises moving to the cloud - and that definitely is because of security concerns."
Posted February 08, 2011
Over the past 3 years, the IOUG ResearchWire studies conducted by Unisphere Research have focused on Oracle technology as well as trends affecting data professionals, allowing IT professionals to benchmark where their organizations stand within their own technology environment. Executive Summaries of all IOUG ResearchWire reports are publicly available for free download and full study reports are also available to IOUG members at no charge when they sign in with their user name and password.
Posted February 02, 2011
Data growth is driving the use of virtualization within data centers. The virtualization evolution from server to storage to desktop is catching on at many small-to-medium size businesses, as well as at large enterprises. Aimed at providing a better end-user and administrator experience than their physical counterparts, virtualized desktops promise lower cost of acquisition and management with a highly scalable, easy-to-deploy and fully protected environment. However, with virtualization desktop infrastructure (VDI) comes a set of new challenges. Chief among these are storage and server resource allocation and data protection and recovery.
Posted February 02, 2011