12 Cloud-Friendly Products For Virtualized Environments

Stepping To The Cloud Via Virtualized Infrastructures

Once customers adopt virtualization, they need new ways to store data, secure networks and information and manage it all. Solution providers, in the meantime, are finding that implementing such technologies actually lays a strong foundation for cloud computing when customers are ready to adopt.

Read on for a look some of those technologies, and get your head in the clouds.

Acronis: Online Backup And Recovery For Mixed Physical/Virtual Environments

Acronis, Woburn, Mass., recently released Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Online, a new application for backing up and recovering files, folders or complete systems to any location with Internet access. The software allows the data of both virtual and physical servers to be backed up to a data center or a storage cloud, with a single interface that allows control of both online and local backups. Customer data is fully protected with AES-256 encryption and user authentication. For large amounts of data, the initial "seed" backup can be done to a portable drive, which can be sent to the target data center or cloud.

BlueArc: Handling Backups And Restores In VMware Environments

San Jose, Calif.-based BlueArc is shipping JetCenter, a new storage appliance that provides high-performance NAS backups and restores in VMware virtualized environments. With JetCenter, customers can use the VMware vCenter management interface to create backups or recover virtual machines. The appliance also directly interfaces with the VMware file system in order to produce space-efficient, writable copies of VMDK files, which are images of virtual appliances created using VMware.

BlueLock: Combining Public And Private Clouds

BlueLock, an Indianapolis-based provider of cloud hosting and managed IT services, has unveiled the beta of a new enterprise-class public cloud offering built using VMware's vCloud Datacenter Service technology, which allows customers to move between their own private clouds and a public cloud. The company also unveiled the beta availability of its BlueLock CloudConnector, a plug-in that enables a single management interface between customers’ VMware-based private clouds and the BlueLock hosted vCloud Datacenter Service.

EMC: Automated Management

EMC unveiled the beta of its Ionix Unified Information Manager 2.0, a new version of the application for unifying network management and then turning into a service the management of network, compute and storage layers. Ionix UIM 2.0 is targeted at helping customers to more easily make the transition from physical to virtual to private cloud infrastructures by unifying and automating the management of Vblock Infrastructure Packages, which combine Cisco, EMC and VMware technologies. EMC said that Ionix UIM 2.0 automates over 60 discrete operations that would normally be performed through disparate management tools.

Emulex: Automating Storage Adapter Management

Emulex recently made available its new OneCommand Manager plug-in (OCM-VCp) for the VMware vCenter management application. The Emulex OneCommand plug-in simplifies management of the company's LightPulse Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapters (HBAs) and OneConnect Universal Converged Network Adapters (UCNAs) within VMware vSphere environments by letting administrators centrally monitor, manage, update and run diagnostics on Emulex adapters directly from the vCenter. It also allows IT administrators to natively update adapter firmware and driver settings directly from within VMware ESX and ESXi environments.

HP: Private Cloud-In-A-Box

HP has introduced its first CloudStart offering, an all-in-one offering the company said can be used to deploy an open, flexible, private cloud environment within 30 days. CloudStart is based on HP's Matrix converged infrastructure technology, and includes the hardware, software and services that let businesses build a private cloud, which they can use to provide pay-per-use services. Those services can be provided from a secure portal, and can be scaled as needed. Customers get real-time access to consumption and chargeback reports. CloudStart is delivered HP Cloud Consulting Services.

HyTrust: Extending Control To Public, Private And Hybrid Clouds

HyTrust, Mountain View, Calif., just released a new version of its HyTrust Appliance, a device which delivers enterprise-class controls for access, accountability and visibility for virtualized infrastructures. The new version is aimed at helping customers adopt private cloud service models, with new access control and capabilities for more flexible infrastructure and virtual network segmentation, controlled self-service and detailed activity logs. Also new is HyTrust Cloud Control, an offering for hybrid and public clouds which provides security and compliance in multi-tenant environments by extending access control, policy enforcement and audit to the VMware cloud.

Neverfail: Extends OEM License Agreement With VMware

Neverfail, an Austin, Texas-based provider of continuous availability and disaster recovery products for Windows applications in physical and virtual server environments, has extended an OEM license agreement it has with VMware. Under that license, first signed in January 2009, VMware uses Neverfail technology to optimize availability and resiliency of VMware vCenter Server by ensuring availability of VMware vCenter Server and its database against hardware, operating system, application and network downtime. It also provides for seamless failover and failback of vCenter Server, as well as disaster recovery capabilities for vCenter Server in local and remote locations.

Scale Computing: Scalable Storage Clusters

Scale Computing, an Indianapolis-based developer and manufacturer of midmarket clustered storage solutions, is now shipping an entry-level version to SMBs. Scale’s N05 Starter Cluster unifies SAN and NAS storage capabilities in physical and virtual server environments. The N05 Starter Cluster includes three nodes with a total usable storage capacity of 1.5 Tbytes, and is priced at $2,500 per node. Customers can add additional nodes as needed. The nodes support a variety of replications typologies, including the ability to replicate data from a single location to multiple locations, multiple locations to a single scale cluster or cross-replication between locations.

RSA: Solution For Cloud Infrastructures

RSA, the security division of storage vendor EMC, just started shipping its new RSA Solution for Cloud Infrastructure, a technology aimed at helping customers rationalize compliance requirements, control frameworks, standards and best practices into a set of centralized security policies that can be applied consistently across virtual and physical infrastructures. Aimed at helping provide security and compliance on cloud infrastructures, it provides dashboard views based on the RSA Archer eGRC platform to help assess security and compliance across physical and VMware virtual infrastructures.

Pano Logic: Partner Certification Program For Virtual Desktops

Pano Logic, Redwood City, Calif., recently brought out a new partner certification program to provide new partners with additional resources help quickly implement and test desktop virtualization with the Pano Logic zero client. Pano Logic said that while its zero client, which has no internal operating system, deploys in as little as an hour, specialized hardware and software can require additional configuration. The company said classes to help partners conduct and evaluate successful pilot implementations have already started.

Virtensys: Virtualizing Server I/O

Beaverton, Ore.-based Virtensys is now shipping its new VIO-4004 I/O virtualization switch. The VIO-4004 consolidates and virtualizes network connectivity to a rack of servers with up to 80 Gbits per second of converged Ethernet bandwidth. It eliminates the need for physical Ethernet cards within a rack, creates up to 256 virtual NICs in each of the servers and provides I/O line rate to both physical and virtual servers to enhance the performance of applications in virtualized and cloud environments, the company said. It deploys without the need to modify existing servers or networks, and supports Ethernet, FCoE, iSCSI and SAS and SATA protocols.

Even More Ways To Add Value To Virtualized Environments

The VMworld conference, held in early September, saw a wide range of vendors bring other ways to add value to virtualized environments, including new data storage and protection technologies and new ways to manage those environments.

For more ideas about how to help customers take advantage of their virtualized environments, click here for an additional 12 storage, VDI, management and other products.