Novell has announced the latest version of PlateSpin Migrate, a workload management product that enables data center managers to move workloads between physical, image, virtual and cloud environments. PlateSpin Migrate provides broad support for operating systems, hypervisors and hardware platforms in the heterogeneous data center. The latest version of PlateSpin Migrate expands the list of platforms supported for physical to virtual migration, by adding support for the recently released SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 from Novell to the existing support for prior versions of SUSE Linux Enterprise.
"It has been a big focus for PlateSpin Migrate to really be not single vendor-focused, or single solution-focused, but to deliver the broadest support of operating systems and hardware support and also virtualization technologies across the board," states Mike Robinson, senior product marketing manager for Novell's PlateSpin line. "We are continuing to deliver on that promise."
PlateSpin Migrate 8.1 also adds support for Windows 2008 and Windows Vista. The latest release of PlateSpin Migrate provides new support for Solaris Containers, giving Sun customers the ability to migrate workloads from physical to virtual environments.
There are also performance improvements for business-critical workload migrations PlateSpin Migrate 8.1, making increased use of block-based transfer technology, which transfers only the portion of the file that has changed. This innovation limits the amount of downtime during the migration process, and improves migration performance, especially over slower and expensive WAN connections. While block-based file transfer has previously been in the product, it is now expanded so it can be used with Novell's exclusive Server Sync functionality, notes Robinson.
This expanded use of block based transfer technology is important due to a market trend Novell is seeing. "The first wave of virtualization was really about the mid-to-lower-tier servers. We are starting to see now a shift in server virtualization to the mid- to upper tiers," points out Bill Kalogiros, workload solution marketing manager for Novell's PlateSpin line.
With this shift, there is heightened concern that applications may not perform in a virtual environment, or that during the migration process, downtime or errors could occur. "The Server Sync capability was not really needed for the lower tier servers, but the mid-to-higher-tier servers now require this more robust and reliable migration tool that allows you to take live snapshots, or copies of these production workloads, test them in their virtual environments, get approval from application owners and then sync those changes. The PlateSpin Migrate solution is really tailored now to the mid-to-upper-tier servers that people are trying to virtualize."
PlateSpin Migrate is a component of Novell's PlateSpin Workload Management solutions, which also includes PlateSpin Recon, PlateSpin Orchestrate, PlateSpin Protect and PlateSpin Forge.
PlateSpin Migrate 8.1 will be available later this month. For more information, go here.