Virtualization Articles
At OpenWorld, Oracle's annual conference for customers and partners, John Matelski, president of the IOUG, and CIO for Dekalb County, Georgia, gave his perspective on the key takeaways from this year's event. Matelski also described the user group's efforts to help the community understand the value of Oracle's engineered systems and deal with the broad implications of big data, and how the IOUG is supporting Oracle DBAs in their evolving roles.
Posted December 12, 2012
VMware, Inc., a provider of virtualization and cloud infrastructure products, announced it is shipping two sets of management toolsets intended to better simplify and automate the management of clouds and applications. VMware vCenter Operations Management Suite 5.6 and VMware vFabric Application Director 5.0 are included in the VMware vCloud Suite 5.1. "With the VMware vCloud Suite, we bring together what customers need to build and manage a cloud infrastructure, as well as new and existing applications by automating infrastructure operations to help IT evolve into a broker of services to the business," says Ramin Sayar, vice president and general manager of cloud infrastructure and management for VMware.
Posted December 10, 2012
I was privileged to deliver a session entitled Managing SQL Server in a Virtual World at the PASS Summit 2012, the largest annual conference for Microsoft SQL Server. It was a packed house, literally at standing-room-only capacity. I delivered the session with my friend David Klee and we were swarmed by attendees after the session wrapped up. With almost 600 people in the room, we conducted one of those informal polls that speakers like to do along the lines of "Raise your hands if …" and the informal findings were very telling. Probably around 90% of the attendees used VMware and SQL Server in some capacity and at least 60% used it in production environments. Another important fact was that only 10% of the attendees were actually able to get information on the performance of the actual VMs themselves. Most had to get all of their information and support from the VM / System administration staff.
Posted November 13, 2012
For years, data warehouses and extract, transform and load (ETL) have been the primary methods of accessing and archiving multiple data sources across enterprises. Now, an emerging approach - data virtualization - promises to advance the concept of the federated data warehouse to deliver more timely and easier-to-access enterprise data. These are some of the observations made at Composite Software's third Annual Data Virtualization Day, held in New York City. This year's gathering was the largest ever, with nearly 250 customers and practitioners in attendance, Composite reports.
Posted November 13, 2012
When virtualization was first born, IT departments went gangbusters using this revolutionary change to get better performance out of their servers. In all the excitement of implementation, something not so very small was overlooked — backup and recovery. The lack of proper planning forced jobs and recovery to fail, and backup admins started feeling backed into a corner. Thankfully, times have changed, and IT departments, now very aware of these issues, have gotten savvy at avoiding the potential pains of virtualization infrastructure. But a new challenge has emerged.
Posted November 13, 2012
Oracle has announced general availability of Oracle Solaris 11.1 and Oracle Solaris Cluster 4.1. Oracle Solaris 11 is the first operating system built for cloud, Charlie Boyle, senior director of Solaris product marketing, tells 5 Minute Briefing. "We have taken lessons learned from our customers and feature requests and built those into Solaris 11.1 to enhance our cloud platform." In addition, Oracle Solaris Cluster 4.1 extends high availability and disaster recovery capabilities of Oracle Solaris and includes virtual cluster features supporting efficient application consolidation.
Posted November 07, 2012
At SAP TechEd 2012 in Las Vegas, SAP unveiled its plans for SAP HANA Cloud, a next-generation cloud platform based on in-memory technology. As part of SAP HANA Cloud, the company also announced the general availability of SAP NetWeaverCloud, an open standards-based application service, and SAP HANA One, a deployment of SAP HANA certified for production use on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud, as the first offerings based on SAP HANA Cloud.
Posted October 24, 2012
Application performance management (APM) software provider Precise has announced the availability of Precise 9.5, a major product release designed to help organizations deliver a better experience for customers using their cloud and mobile applications. Precise 9.5 rapidly detects and analyzes application problems resulting from server and storage virtualization resource contention, and also addresses the challenge of managing mobile traffic growth. The new release focuses on three key themes, all with the common goal of identifying and resolving potential problems before they can affect the customer experience or cause an outage, Sherman Wood, vice president of product at Precise, tells DBTA.
Posted October 24, 2012
Data management vendor Delphix has released a new version of its database virtualization platform, Delphix 3.0. Featuring new support for Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) and Microsoft SQL Server, the latest version expands the power of virtualization across the enterprise database landscape. Virtual databases powered by Delphix 3.0 have capabilities that cannot be duplicated on physical infrastructure, the company contends. "The big benefit of our product is we help companies change their data management SLAs," Jed Yueh, CEO of Delphix, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted October 18, 2012
Composite Software introduced version 6.2 of the Composite Data Virtualization Platform at Data Virtualization Day 2012, its data virtualization conference in New York City. The new release contains additional analytics enablement capabilities including support for more analytic data sources, additional analytic platform optimizations, and expanded data governance. "High-performance access to big data, analytic appliances and data warehouses is far simpler and faster with Composite's data virtualization solution," says Kevin Ott, Composite Software senior VP of product development.
Posted October 10, 2012
CA Technologies launched a new book called "Service Virtualization: Reality Is Overrated" at Oracle OpenWorld. Co-authored by CA CTO John Michelsen and CA LISA director of product marketing Jason English, the book explains how deploying service virtualization to simulate the behavior, responsiveness and data of dependent systems can help remove constraints in the existing software environment, and help increase the speed, performance, and agility for the development of enterprise application software.
Posted October 10, 2012
ExtraHop Networks, a provider of network-based application performance management (APM) solutions, has introduced ExtraHop Discovery Edition, a new 60-day, free trial version of the ExtraHop Application Delivery Assurance system, and the EH2000v, a more powerful version of its EH1000v virtual appliance. The ExtraHop Discovery Edition is aimed at helping IT teams to easily explore the benefits of network-based APM, while the EH2000v supports enterprises' increasingly virtualized and distributed IT environments, providing up to a sustained 3Gbps throughput capacity and support for over 1,000 hosts or VMs.
Posted October 08, 2012
Oracle announced the availability of Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.2, the latest enhancement to the world's most popular, open source, cross-platform virtualization software. Making it easier and more efficient to manage larger numbers of similar virtual machines, Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.2's new VM Group feature enables grouping of VMs so that administrators or users can operate on any number of VMs all at once, through a graphical user interface, APIs, and command line tools. In addition, VMs that don't need user interaction can now be started within Oracle VM VirtualBox the same way as standard VMs. Virtual machines of all types can be set to start automatically after the host system is booted, allowing virtual machines to be managed similarly to other host services.
Posted September 19, 2012
Composite Software third annual Data Virtualization Day will take place October 10 in New York City. Data Virtualization Day 2012: The Logical Next Steps represents the world's largest gathering of data virtualization experts and implementers, expected to draw more than 200 Composite Software customers and prospects. Attendees will hear from leading authorities on data virtualization, data warehousing, data integration and business intelligence discussing "Data Virtualization: Why it's Logical for Business and IT."
Posted September 18, 2012
VMware, Inc., a provider of virtualization and cloud infrastructure, announced the general availability of the new VMware vCloud Suite 5.1, a complete, integrated cloud infrastructure solution that integrates VMware's leading virtualization, cloud infrastructure and management portfolio into a single SKU, simplifying the adoption of cloud era technologies. "By bringing together everything customers may need to build and manage agile, reliable cloud infrastructure, the VMware vCloud Suite simplifies and automates IT operations and delivers on the promise of cloud computing," says Mike Clayville, vice president of product marketing for cloud infrastructure products for VMware.
Posted September 17, 2012
Open Virtualization Alliance (OVA) member company Abyres has successfully transitioned several Malaysian government agencies to open virtualization environments running Microsoft Windows applications powered by KVM. As a result, the agencies have a cost-effective, user-friendly platform that is easy to manage and maximizes utilization, reliability and availability of the high-performance virtual machines Abyres delivers.
Posted August 24, 2012
Shelter Mutual Insurance Co., an insurance company with a presence in 14 states, was facing out of control server sprawl and difficulties with air flow and rack space, writes Jim Utsler in the August issue of IBM Systems Magazine. To deal with the problem, Shelter opted to move many of its applications to IFL processors running on its mainframe, slowing the growth rate of the existing Intel technology-based boxes. As an added bonus, the company's applications are now running faster on its zEnterprise 114 (z114) platform than they had in the past, notes Utsler.
Posted August 24, 2012
Oracle has announced Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud Software 2.0. According to Oracle, customers in 43 countries across 22 industries have already adopted Oracle Exalogic, and it is the fastest growing Oracle engineered system with 3x Y/Y sales bookings based on the last two quarters of FY 2012. The second generation of Exalogic is raising the bar even further, with a single integrated system that addresses the key business goals of application owners - to seize market opportunities, lower business risk and reduce cost and complexity, noted Hasan Rizvi, senior vice president for product development at Oracle, who spoke during a webcast presentation to launch the new release.
Posted August 23, 2012
Seriously chronic geeks like me usually were raised on a strong diet of science fiction that shaped our expectations of the future. Reading Heinlein and Asimov as a boy led me to expect flying cars and robot servants. Reading William Gibson and other "cyberpunk" authors as a young man led me to expect heads-up virtual reality glasses and neural interfaces. Flying cars and robot companions don't seem to be coming anytime soon, but we are definitely approaching a world in which virtual - or at least augmented - reality headsets and brain control interfaces become mainstream.
Posted August 22, 2012
Quest Software has announced that vRanger 6.0, the latest version of its virtual data protection solution which provides backup, replication, and recovery for VMware, now also enables customers to back up and restore physical Windows servers. Providing a single source of protection for both virtual and physical environments, vRanger 6.0 is VMware Ready certified for vSphere 5, provides OS support for Windows Server 2003 and 2008, and also will support Windows Server 2012 upon its release to market. "We feel that we can reduce the complexity and reduce the number of tools used in a Windows environment that is using VMware," Greg Davoll, senior director, product marketing, data protection business, at Quest, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted August 21, 2012
VMware, Inc., a provider of virtualization and cloud infrastructure, says it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Nicira, Inc., a network virtualization vendor. VMware will acquire Nicira for approximately $1.05 billion in cash plus approximately $210 million of assumed unvested equity awards. The acquisition is subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions. The parties expect the acquisition to close during the second half of 2012, according to VMware. The acquisition has been approved by the boards of directors of both VMware and Nicira and the stockholders of Nicira.
Posted August 20, 2012
Symantec has introduced Veritas Operations Manager 5.0 and Veritas Operations Manager Advanced 5.0. Veritas Operations Manager provides a centralized management console that bridges the gap across servers and storage and enables organizations to get end to end visibility not just from the application to the storage spindles themselves but also in a heterogeneous environment, Don Angspatt, vice president of product management, Storage and Availability Management Group, Symantec Corp., tells 5 Minute Briefing. The Advanced version is an add-on offering that provides additional capabilities for reporting, enables an enterprise-wide multi-site view, and also allows users to verify utilization for network attached storage as well.
Posted August 20, 2012
Certes Networks, a developer of network and cloud encryption solutions, has announced that its Virtual Certes Enforcement Point (vCEP) for cloud security has achieved VMware Ready status. This designation indicates that the vCEP has undergone detailed test procedures and is supported on VMware vSphere 5 for production environments.
Posted August 07, 2012
Oracle has entered into an agreement to acquire Xsigo Systems, a provider of network virtualization technology, whose products have been deployed at enterprise customers including British Telecom, eBay, Softbank, and Verizon. Xsigo's software-defined networking technology simplifies cloud infrastructure and operations by allowing customers to connect any server to any network and storage, enabling increased asset utilization and application performance while reducing cost.
Posted July 31, 2012
Data virtualization vendor Composite Software and Armanta, Inc., a provider of an integrated BI and analytics platform, have formed a partnership to deliver end-to-end enterprise risk management solutions to the financial services industry. The recent financial crisis points to a need for better enterprise level risk management, Robert Eve, executive vice president of marketing at Composite Software, tells 5 Minute Briefing. However, he notes, the challenge with traditional risk management is that it does not include enough factors for the analysis or may not be capable of handling the volume of information that should be considered for analysis. "If you can't access all the information, or the information is at a volume level that is too great to analyze, then you are really not able to manage risk, and do what-if analysis to avoid problems."
Posted July 11, 2012
Dell and Quest Software announced they have entered into a definitive agreement for Dell to acquire Quest, an IT management software provider offering a broad selection of solutions that solve the most common and most challenging IT problems. Under terms of the agreement, approved by the boards of directors of both companies, Dell will pay $28 per share in cash for each share of Quest for an aggregate purchase price of approximately $2.4 billion, net of Quest's cash and debt. The transaction is expected to close in Dell's third fiscal quarter, subject to approval by Quest's shareholders and customary conditions.
Posted July 02, 2012
Companies are scrambling to learn all the various ways they can slice, dice, and mine big data coming in from across the enterprise and across the web. But with the rise of big data — hundreds of terabytes or petabytes of data — comes the challenge of where and how all of this information will be stored. For many organizations, current storage systems — disks, tapes, virtual tapes, clouds, inmemory systems — are not ready for the onslaught, industry experts say. There are new methodologies and technologies coming on the scene that may help address this challenge. But one thing is certain: Whether organizations manage their data in their internal data centers, or in the cloud, a lot more storage is going to be needed. As Jared Rosoff, director of customer engagement with 10gen, puts it: "Big data means we need ‘big storage.'"
Posted June 13, 2012
Oracle has introduced new desktop virtualization software, including new releases of three products. The new product versions are Oracle Virtual Desktop Infrastructure 3.4, Sun Ray Software 5.3 and Oracle Virtual Desktop Client 3.1.The desktop virtualization solutions enable organizations to provision access for employees to personal desktop computing environments, enterprise applications, and data without being tied to a particular physical client device. The benefits of this approach include user mobility, data security, and enhanced centralized administration - key issues for organizations involved in the public sector, healthcare field, financial sector, and call center operations, where centralized control is important for compliance and security reasons, Monika Kumar, senior director, product marketing at Oracle, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted May 23, 2012
Today, at Informatica World in Las Vegas, Informatica, a provider of data integration software, unveiled Informatica 9.5. This new release addresses the big data challenges customers are facing as a result of the explosion of data volumes in the enterprise, fueled by social media, cloud computing, and mobile computing data, Ivan Chong, executive vice president and general manager of Data Quality product division at Informatica, tells 5 Minute Briefing. Describing it as a major release of the Informatica Platform, Chong says Informatica 9.5 includes a wide range of new features to help customers extract more value from their big data assets.
Posted May 15, 2012
In the beginning, information was unknown. Eventually, the growing populace absorbed information as it was passed on by each generation person to person, but only the elite had access to that knowledge base. King James and Guttenberg made that information more accessible to the general public but still, access to information was very limited. Galileo, the famous Italian physicist, mathematician and astronomer, originally published his finding in Latin that proved the world was in reality round not flat. Even though this science contradicted church doctrine, the population remained apathetic. When Galileo then published those same findings in Italian, he was excommunicated. By sharing this knowledge outside the "inner circle" he became an outcast. The world was not quite ready to share the "knowledge base" with the common man. As time passed, the ability of the privileged to keep the knowledge base contained to a privileged few waned.
Posted May 09, 2012
SAP unveiled its roadmap for the database and mobile markets. At a press conference in San Francisco that was also made available online, Dr. Vishal Sikka, a member of the SAP executive Board, Technology & Innovation, said the company's vision for the SAP real-time data platform includes the SAP HANA platform, Sybase data management offerings, and SAP solutions for enterprise information management (EIM). "In our minds, and in our customers' minds there is now absolutely no doubt that HANA represents the database architecture for the future, for OLTP and OLAP, for analyzing structured and unstructured data, for legacy applications and for new applications," Sikka told the audience.
Posted April 25, 2012
Quest Software, Inc. has announced the availability of vFundamentals, a new product suite that delivers backup, capacity planning and resource optimization for VMware virtual environments. vFundamentals is intended to enable virtualization administrators to grow their virtual environments knowing that critical assets are properly utilized and protected. The new bundle includes Quest vRanger Pro, a VMware backup, replication and recovery solution, as well as capacity management and optimization technology from VKernel's vOps Server Standard Edition. VKernel was acquired in November 2011 by Quest.
Posted April 10, 2012
Symantec Corp. plans to announce, on Tuesday, a new solution intended to help organizations improve storage I/O performance and availability for VMware vSphere implementations. The product, Veritas Dynamic Multi-Pathing for VMware, is designed to help companies increase I/O performance, increase visibility and improve management of underlying storage, as well as enhance the availability of the virtual machine and applications. "Organizations are moving mission-critical applications to VMware, but when they do that, they add certain SLAs or performance requirements that they have to meet," Dan Lamorena, director of product marketing for Symantec's Storage and Availability Management Group, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted April 02, 2012
There's no question that cloud computing is a hot commodity these days. Companies of all types and sizes are embracing cloud computing-both internally and from external service providers - as a way to cost-effectively build new capabilities. With the rapid growth of cloud comes new questions about responsibility within organizations, in terms of how services will be paid for, who has ultimate say over cloud decisions, and how cloud fits into the overall strategic direction of the business.
Posted March 28, 2012
All the major extensions to the Spring Framework are now compatible with Spring 3.1, the latest version of the open source Java development framework, according to VMware. Spring Integration, Spring Security, Spring Batch, Spring Data, Spring Mobile and Spring for Android all now support Spring 3.1, making it easier and faster for enterprise developers to build the next generation of enterprise applications. "The latest release of the Spring Framework and its major extensions continue the tradition of taking care of the infrastructure so developers can focus on building applications that address today's business requirements," Adrian Colyer, CTO Cloud and Application Services, VMware.
Posted March 20, 2012
As IT departments strive to lower costs while operating more efficiently organizations are seeking efficient ways to ensure that data in their VMware environments is properly protected, according to Quest Software and ExaGrid Systems, which are marketing a joint virtual data protection solution. Using Quest vRanger in tandem with ExaGrid's disk backup appliance, the vendors say, provides customers with an efficient, disk-based backup solution tailored to meet the specific needs of VMware virtual environments.
Posted March 20, 2012
Quest Software said it has entered into definitive agreements with affiliates of Insight Venture Partners to become a private company. In the deal, stockholders would receive $23 per share in cash, valuing the company at approximately $2.0 billion. Upon closing, Quest will be a privately held company and will continue to be led by chairman and CEO Vinny Smith and the existing senior management team. "As a private company, we will have increased flexibility to drive innovation across our product lines and execute our long-term strategy," said Smith in a statement released by the company.
Posted March 09, 2012