15 Cloud And Virtualization Products Fueling Buzz At VMworld 2013

VMware Tries To Extend Its Influence In The Data Center

VMware dominates server virtualization and is trying to extend its reach into other areas of the data center, like storage and networking. At VMworld 2013 in San Francisco this week, VMware's ecosystem partners are talking about new offerings that tap into the latest innovations coming out of VMware.

There's a wide range of new products on display, including software that monitors cloud capacity and performance, software that ensures that data on virtual machines stays secured while VMs are zooming back and forth between private and public clouds, and products that take advantage of brand new VMware technologies like NSX network virtualization.

CRN sorted through the deluge of news and here presents 15 examples of products that people are talking about at this year's virtualization and cloud "Super Bowl."

Net Optics xFilter 3.0

Net Optics is rolling out xFilter 3.0, a type of traffic monitoring software that's sold as a virtual appliance or loaded on hardware.

Net Optics says the xFilter 3.0 update gives better insight into what's happening with traffic in converged infrastructure environments. The appliance comes with a Network Packet Broker, which includes up to 12 10-GB ports, where traffic monitoring tools for the latest protocols in use in the data center can be plugged in.

The xFilter 3.0 virtual appliance is priced starting at $2,995, and the hardware appliance starts at $24,490. Both are available now.

Splunk App For VMware

Splunk, which provides search and analysis of big data troves, with visual depictions of it, is talking about its updated Splunk for VMware app, which keeps tabs on virtual environments to make sure everything's running smoothly.

The updated Splunk For VMware gathers data from apps, operating systems, networks and hardware and uses it to identify areas of security weakness as well as usage that doesn't fit with company policy.

One big key to getting business value from big data is being able to visualize patterns and performance, and the update provides maps of virtual environments that do just that. With this software, organizations can configure their virtual environments to get the most possible capacity without going too far and opening the door to potential system failures.

Hotlink DR Express

Virtualization management startup HotLink is unveiling Hotlink DR Express, a plug-in for VMware vCenter that uses Amazon Web Services to replicate and recover vSphere virtual machines for disaster recovery and business continuity. When an outage happens, the plug-in automatically restores virtual machines and continues operations in AWS.

HotLink's key advantage is price -- the plug-in is priced the same as basic backup software.

HyTrust Appliance 3.5

Cloud startup HyTrust is showing off HyTrust Appliance 3.5, which it's describing as a "major upgrade" that provides a level of security for virtual and cloud environments that can help prevent "catastrophic, Snowden-style breaches."

HyTrust says its appliance can help a company with virtual and cloud environments avoid the disastrous scenario of a rogue admin copying all its virtual machines and walking out the door with confidential data.

To protect against insider attacks, HyTrust Appliance 3.5 includes role-based monitoring, automated threat detection and real-time alerts. It also works in accordance with the "two-man rule," which prevents a single actor from using stolen credentials to make off with sensitive data.

HyTrust also announced an $18.5 million Series C venture capital round led by Intel Capital, VMware, Fortinet and In-Q-Tel, the CIA's investment arm.

CiRBA Reservation Console

Toronto-based vendor CiRBA is releasing Reservation Console, a software tool that automates the process of routing workloads and reserving capacity in virtual and cloud environments.

Admins typically choose the hosting environment on which to run their workloads on a manual basis, which means they have to figure out how much server and storage capacity they need as well. Reservation Console removes the guesswork and adds automation to make the choices easier.

CiRBA says the tool is like a "hotel reservation system" that ensures that application groups and lines of business get the capacity they need. The Reservation Console will hit the market in November, CiRBA says.

Gigamon's 'Visibility-As-A-Service'

Cloud vendor Gigamon, fresh off its July IPO, is showing off an update to its Management Layer product that promises to enable better cross-organizational visibility in organizations.

Combined with an update to Gigamon's proprietary Flow Mapping technology, admins can deliver "visibility-as-a-service" to the various departments inside their companies. This is an example of how the multi-tenancy approach that makes public cloud such an economically viable service is making its way into enterprises, the vendor says.

Lenovo ThinkCenter M32 Thin Client

Lenovo is taking the wraps off its ThinkCenter M32, an Intel Celeron-powered thin client that's tuned for desktop virtualization and comes in Linux, LeTOS and Windows Embedded Standard 7 flavors.

In a separate initiative, Lenovo is joining EMC's VSPEX program, which bundles Lenovo ThinkServers and other technologies validated by EMC into private cloud packages for small and medium businesses. It's a sign that the EMC-Lenovo partnership formed in August 2012 is alive and well, despite the fact that Lenovo considered buying the x86 server business of IBM, a key EMC rival.

Adaptive Computing's 'Moab' OpenStack Release

Cloud vendor Adaptive Computing has joined the OpenStack Foundation and is showing off Moab, its OpenStack-based software that does what it calls "policy-based optimization" for cloud environments. What this means is that enterprises can use the existing management tools to figure out how to get the most performance and efficiency from their OpenStack-based clouds.

"Now enterprises can avoid any vendor lock-in that limits performance of their cloud or software licensing savings as they look to leverage lower cost or open source alternatives," Adaptive Computing said in a press release explaining why this is important.

Eaton Intelligent Power Manager 1.4

Eaton is talking about Intelligent Power Manager 1.4, an update coming next month that handles live migration of virtual machines when the power goes out. It also works with VMware Site Recovery Manager to move data in disaster recovery scenarios.

The 1.4 update adds support for Cisco UCS and can be set up to limit power consumption on each individual server to maximize backup battery power in cases where the power goes out for long periods, Eaton says.

Pivot3 vSTAC R2S P Cubed Appliance

Desktop virtualization vendor Pivot3 is unveiling its vSTAC R2S P Cubed appliance, a pre-configured and tested environment for running VMware's Horizon Suite, which is software that connects enterprise devices with data residing on back-end systems.

The idea is to take the difficulty out of installing Horizon Suite in organizations that might not have the staff on hand to undertake such a project. The appliance can run between 117 and 154 virtual desktops, and customers can load balance storage resources across multiple appliances to handle additional users, Pivot3 says.

TwinStrata CloudArray 4.7

TwinStrata, which sells appliances that connect back-end enterprise infrastructure with the public cloud, is enabling customers to access production snapshots of their data remotely with an update to its CloudArray storage software. This is important because it makes for easier disaster recovery and testing.

TwinStrata CloudArray 4.7 also comes with stronger encryption key protection, support for Keystone authentication for OpenStack clouds, and support for dsNet, a storage technology from cloud vendor Cleversafe.

Skyera's skyEagle All-Flash Storage Arrays

Skyera, a San Jose, Calif.-based storage startup, is showing off its skyEagle line of all-Flash enterprise storage arrays, which come with a whopping 500 terabytes of capacity that breaks out to around 2.5 Petabytes after compression and deduplication are factored in. New features include improvements to high availability, synchronous/asynchronous replication, and performance of up to 20GB/sec and 5 million IOPS.

Cumulus Networks' Layer 2 Gateway Services

Cloud startup Cumulus Networks, which develops a version of Linux for switching hardware, is showing off its new hardware Layer 2 gateway services and talking about its integration with VMware's newly unveiled NSX network virtualization offering.

The new services connect virtual networks to physical workloads like databases, storage and appliances, and this, the company says, lets service providers and enterprises provision physical and virtual networks much faster than they were able to do before.

Net Optics Phantom Virtualization Tap 3.0

Phantom Virtualization Tap 3.0 is an update to software that handles monitoring and security in virtual and software-defined networking environments. It supports VMware's ESX hypervisor and is integrated with vCenter management.

Taking advantage of advanced tunneling protocols, the software ensures that monitoring tools are working the way they should and that throughput stays at a high level.

Phantom Virtualization Tap 3.0 is priced starting at $1,299 per physical host. A hardware Phantom HD appliance is priced starting at $14,990. Both are available now.

McAfee Data Center Security Suite For Server

Intel-owned McAfee is showing off its Data Center Security Suite, software for servers that secures workloads as they move through private and public cloud infrastructure.

Security admins can use it to discover and keep track of workloads with VMware's vCenter and on Amazon Web Services, and policy management for both physical and virtual machines is handled with McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator.