VMworld 2011: 15 Hot Products From VMware Partners

Keep Your Eyes Peeled At VMworld

VMworld 2011, the annual gathering of vendors that live within the giant galactic swirl of server virtualization kingpin VMware, is taking place this week in Las Vegas. VMware rules the roost in server virtualization, but its partner ecosystem has been busily finding ways to add value, and this is baked into many product releases at this year's show.

From management and monitoring of cloud and data center environments, to security analytics and data warehousing, the new offerings on display at VMworld 2011 solve key problems while also greatly boosting the performance and efficiency of virtual and cloud environments. Here CRN offers 15 examples that stood out from the pack.

Juniper Networks vGW Virtual Gateway 5.0

Juniper Networks lifted the curtain on its vGW Virtual Gateway, which handles security and compliance for workloads running in the virtual environment. vGW 5.0 includes monitoring, firewall, intrusion detection and compliance features, along with new security measures such as antivirus, hypervisor compliance monitoring, and large scale virtualization management capabilities. Juniper describes vGW 5.0 as a unified threat management solution for the cloud.

Sentilla Analytics for Cloud

Sentilla, a Redwood City, Calif.-based vendor, unveiled Sentilla Analytics for Cloud, a tool for helping organizations get a handle on the financial impact they'll face in moving their IT operations from physical to virtual and cloud infrastructure.

Specifically, Sentilla Analytics for Cloud calculates the costs involved in migrating existing applications to virtual and cloud environments, as well as the expenses associated with deploying new apps in public and private cloud environments. The tool also provides detailed analysis on physical infrastructure capex, and opex associated with personnel, maintenance, power consumption and software licensing, among other metrics.

CloudBees DEV@cloud Private Edition

Boston-based cloud startup CloudBees launched a private beta of DEV@cloud Private Edition (PE), a centralized management tool that features automatic provisioning, role based access control, and the ability to rapidly deploy infrastructure resources within an organization. DEV@cloud Private Edition also addresses security concerns in the cloud with advanced security policy and update management. CloudBees makes a platform-as-a-service for running applications in the cloud, and in July scored $10.5 million in Series B financing in a round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners.

Virtual Computer NxTop 4

Desktop virtualization vendor Virtual Computer launched NxTop 4, a product that handles centralized and distributed storage for virtual machines and also includes a stateless client-side hypervisor. The combination of the two enables customers to store all their data in the data center while getting a genuine authentic desktop user experience that's cheaper than server-hosted VDI. Lenovo is working with Virtual Computer to provide NxTop 4 on a range of Lenovo PCs running Intel Core vPro processors.

NEC Express5800/R320b Fault-Tolerant Servers

NEC took the wraps off its Express5800/R320b fault-tolerant servers, which come with six-core Intel Xeon processor 5600 series processors under the hood. NEC says the Express5800/r320b offers 39 percent cost savings -- in the form of reduced licensing and maintenance expenses -- over traditional high availability (HA) server clusters. They’re also built with a level of power and performance that makes them ideal for hosting mission-critical business applications, according to NEC.

Wyse X Class Mobile Thin Client (8/30)

Wyse Technology unveiled its X class Mobile Thin Client, which supports integration with Citrix, Microsoft and VMware and features an 11 inch LED backlit display. This bundle of mobile productivity can be set up with SUSE Linux, Windows Embedded Standard 2009 and Windows 7, or Wyse WSM for provisioned environments.

One key selling point for the Wyse X Class is its versatility: It gives road warriors the ability to work online and offline with support for VMware View 5 local mode and Wyse WSM "cruiser mode".

Mellanox SX1016

Mellanox Technologies at VMworld 2011 launched SX1016, a 64-port 10 GbE switch packaged into a 1U form factor. The SX1016 offers up to 1.28 terabytes per second of switching bandwidth, along with high port density and just 1.8W of power consumption per port, which allows it to fit into a variety of data center deployment scenarios. Other features include Data Center Bridging, management support for IPv6 today, and the option for future software upgrades to add additional L2 and L3 features.

Zenoss Service Dynamics

Zenoss, a vendor of management software for physical, virtual, and cloud environments, added support for VMware vSphere 5 and vCloud Director 1.5 to its Zenoss Service Dynamics monitoring tool. Zenoss Service Dynamics is designed to automatically identify potential problem areas in virtual and cloud infrastructure and can help operations staff identify the source of issues, speeding a process that can often be time consuming and headache inducing.

Bluelock Portfolio

Service provider Bluelock launched a support tool called Bluelock Portfolio, which gives organizations insight into the utilization costs of their cloud infrastructure, which they can then use to optimize their operations and ensure that their getting the ROI they're seeking. Bluelock Portfolio drills down into cloud applications and provides a cost breakdown that's customizable by region, site location, line of business, application or virtual data center. Armed with this data, organizations can figure out which of their departments are consuming the lion's share of their IT spending budget -- and make adjustments as needed.

Mitel Unified Communicator Gets VMware View 5 Integration

VoIP and collaboration software vendor Mitel has been working with VMware to integrate its Unified Communicator (UC) Advanced client software with VMware View 5. At VMworld 2011, Mitel showed off the fruits of this work, which lets Mitel customers access voice telephony and video streaming as part of a VMware View session on a virtual desktop. The Mitel-VMware collaboration is an example of the symbiotic technology partnerships that are currently flourishing in the virtualization and cloud markets. Mitel gains from giving users greater flexibility, while VMware wins by adding more desktop-like functionality to its desktop virtualization offering.

Quest Software Foglight Network Management System

Quest Software launched a barrage of new products at VMworld 2011, including its Foglight Network Management System (NMS), a tool that gives organizations visibility into network performance, fault management, and device availability on their networks. Featuring a user interface with Google-like simplicity, Foglight NMS offers real-time status for key performance indicators (KPIs) such as CPU load, network interface traffic, latency, packet loss and event logs, and it highlights potentially problematic devices and network areas.

LogLogic Enterprise Virtual Appliance

LogLogic used VMworld 2011 as a backdrop to launch its Enterprise Virtual Appliance(EVA), a software-based product that provides data warehousing and forensics analysis for IT data. EVA is powered by LogLogic's latest 5.2 IT data management engine, and is optimized for VMware-based networking environments.

LogLogic's EVA can generate reports on a regular or on demand basis, and it works with up to 16,000 end user devices, including PCs, laptops, and workstations. According to LogLogic, EVA stores up to 8.5 terabytes for up to 10 years, which makes it a good fit for cloud deployments and virtual data centers.

NetOptics Phantom HD

Net Optics at VMworld 2011 launched Phantom HD, an appliance that allows businesses with remote offices to cut IT costs and boost the security of virtualized networks. Phantom HD works by aggregating raw packets of data from disparate locations to a central aggregation point, which allows networks to handles higher volumes of data with minimal impact to throughput. Phantom HD also obviates the need for a physical, wired connection between the monitoring and access layers and the instrumentation layer on the network.

Ixia IxLoad-VM

Ixia, a vendor of converged IP and wireless network testing products, debuted IxLoad-VM, a tool for testing the performance and health of virtualized data center infrastructure. It works by using "virtual test ports," or virtual software implementations of Ixia's Ethernet test equipment, to keep close tabs on application performance in virtual environments and identify potential areas of inefficiency.

Liquidware Labs FlexApp

Desktop virtualization vendor Liquidware Labs added a key new feature to its ProfileUnity product, which handles migration of Windows native user data to Citrix XenDesktop, VMware View, and Windows 7 environments. FlexApp, formerly codenamed AppSnapp, makes it possible to install user and department applications in virtual desktop environments, something that has been a major barrier to adoption of VDI. ProfileUnity FlexApp also maintains the all important customization capability that is seen as an enabler to furthering the spread of VDI in organizations that have already taken the plunge. Alpharetta, Ga.-based Liquidware Labs recently hired three executives from Quest Software -- Chris Akerberg, David Feathergill and Grace Krokidas -- all of whom came to Quest through the company's 2008 acquisition of server virtualization startup Vizioncore.