Arkeia Enterprise Backup lends more Enterprise Credibility to Ubuntu Server

In one of my older articles, I explained how Ubuntu Server has slowly made significant inroads in many enterprise data centers. Ubuntu has been the favorite distribution of many system administrators, architects and various other IT staff. It was these fans of the Linux distribution that brought Ubuntu into their data centers and slowly deployed Ubuntu into ever increasing roles. I have seen Ubuntu Server deployed in roles from simple kiosks and desktops to full blown web server and database farms. Many senior level managers do not even know that key components of their infrastructures are running on Ubuntu Server.

Most data centers use an enterprise backup platform like Symantec’s NetBackup. These platforms are often very complex and extremely expensive to operate. Without a solid comprehensive backup strategy and platform, however, you place your disaster recovery and business continuity in great risk. For those users of Ubuntu Server who do not wish to incur the expense and complexity of NetBackup and other similar platforms, Arkeia Software has released a free version of their popular enterprise backup server for Ubuntu Server. This strategic move lends Ubuntu more Enterprise Credibility while also giving Arkeia more visibility and market share within the enterprise backup market. Lest you think that this is a watered down version of the product line, Arkeia has spelled out what is available to Ubuntu Server users along with the capabilities of the platform.

From the site:

Arkeia Software provides packages specifically designed for Ubuntu distributions, both 32bit and 64-bit architectures, along with specialized agents for the protection of applications and databases running on Ubuntu, such as Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL, and LDAP. Ubuntu is also a supported platform for Arkeia Network Backup Disaster Recovery for Linux, which enables bare-metal restores of entire systems.

Arkeia Network Backup: Enterprise Edition for Ubuntu

Arkeia Software provides a fully-licensed, free version of Arkeia Network Backup that is available in the Ubuntu 8.04 LTS software repository. With a few clicks from within the GUI, or just a simple command using the ‘apt-get’ utility, Ubuntu users can quickly deploy a fully-featured backup server. Arkeia Network Backup: Enterprise Edition for Ubuntu offers an advanced network backup solution with the ease-of-use and deployment that Ubuntu users are accustomed to.

What’s Included

• Arkeia Network Backup Server for Ubuntu 8.04 LTS
• 2 Client Agents supporting Windows workstations and desktops, and a vast majority of Linux machines, Mac OS X and BSD computers
• 1 Drive license for disk-based (up to 250GB) or tape backups
• Support via online forums, knowledgebase, and wiki

Learn more about Arkeia Network Backup.

Arkeia and Open Source

Arkeia Software was the first professional network backup solution for Linux and has supported the open source community since 1999. Today, Arkeia continues to provide the deepest and broadest support for Linux and open source with more than 100 platforms supported. Arkeia acknowledges the work of thousands of Linux users who have donated their time and expertise towards the goal of making Linux and open source software a viable alternative.

Lean more about Arkeia’s open source solutions.

Introducing Indicee: The founding Crystal Reports team returns to provide a cloud reporting application for the masses

I received an email letting me know about a new company, Indicee, that will be publicly launching within the next few weeks.

The Indicee story includes a few key elements: a notable team, an innovative product and impressive financing. Indicee is a new arrival on a very competitive landscape but is filling a void left by most BI and reporting software available – allowing users and businesses to avoid the pain of dealing with spreadsheets and mashing data to create reports.

• Indicee provides the quickest and most effective way to create and share reports. Users with no IT expertise can combine data from their business applications and generate reports using Indicee’s innovative cloud-based service.
• The Indicee vision is 20 years in the making. Indicee Co-founder, Mark Cunningham was part of the team that developed Crystal Reports, which grew to become the dominant product in its category. Today, Crystal Reports from SAP’s Business Objects division is the tool of choice for software developers, IT professionals and business intelligence consultants worldwide. Indicee’s vision is to bring reporting and analysis to the “masses” – the Holy Grail that the team was striving for when they first launched Crystal Reports in 1991.
• The track record and reputation of the Indicee founding team paired with the product concept and market opportunity has enabled the company to attract the financing required to fuel growth. Indicee recently completed a $6M initial VC financing, bringing the total raised since inception to more than $8M. Indicee’s angel investors include the original founders of Crystal Decisions. Indicee’s VC investors are Yaletown Venture Partners of Vancouver and Granite Ventures of San Francisco.
• There are three key aspects that make Indicee unique:
• How Indicee accesses data. The near-ubiquity of reporting infrastructure, such as Crystal Reports, provides a virtually untapped and readily-accessible source of data and meta-data that, with Indicee, can be accessed by end users, combined with other data (Excel, CSV, SaaS sources etc.) and uploaded to the cloud without the need to directly access information locked up in corporate databases.
• How Indicee enable users to query data. For years Indicee founders listened to users wonder “Why can’t I just ask a question and get an answer?”. To address this, they built a dead-simple interface that allows users to ask business questions in plain English. Reports and visualizations are then produced on-demand from data uploaded to the cloud, eliminating hours of tedious cutting and pasting data from “canned“ reports into spreadsheets.
• How Indicee engages people.  Empowering and enabling business users in organizations to access data and information provides collaborative decision-making, transparency and alignment.  Indicee users can connect with each other and share data securely with colleagues or associates in an online community/social exchange.
• Indicee was founded by Mark Cunningham –16 years of entrepreneurial and technology experience previously Founder/CEO of Symmetrics, founder Crystal Decisions acquired by Seagate in 1996, and Fred Tummonds – 11 years of high tech industry experience previously at Business Objects where he was Vice President responsible for Enterprise Reporting.
• In early 2009 a beta version of Indicee software was released for commercial use, attracting both large and mid-sized businesses and partners including Mary Kay Cosmetics, Alco Ventures and Sage Software and others.

Check them out at http://indicee.com/

Cloud Computing to Breed the Netbook of the Server World.

With the massive push toward cloud computing in the enterprise, there are some considerations that hardware vendors will have to come to terms with in the long run. Unlike the old infrastructure model with hardware bearing the brunt of fault tolerance, the new infrastructure model places all fault tolerance concerns within the software layer itself. I won’t say that this is a new concept as Google has been doing exactly this for a very long time (in IT time at least.) This accomplishes many things, but two particular benefits are that load balancing can now be more intelligent overall, and hardware can be reduced to the absolute most commodity parts available to cut cost.

Because the cloud does not need hardware to provide fault tolerance, the hardware required for a ‘cloud server’ is very basic. I like to think of these servers as netbook equivalents. Bargain bin motherboards, processors, RAM and hard drives can be thrown together to make a low cost commodity cloud server. A ‘Cloud OS’ and ‘Cloud FS’ handle the underpinnings as far as operating system and distributed file system. When combined in the right fashion, the Cloud Software Layer along with the underpinning Cloud OS and Cloud FS can literally allow one of these ‘cloud servers’ to be plugged in and auto-provision itself into the resource pool. When there is a failure of a component or an entire cloud server, the Cloud Software Layer can notify system administrators. Replacement is as simple as unplugging the bad server and plugging in a new one. The server will auto provision itself into the resource pool and it’s ready to go. Management and maintenance are simplified greatly.

Looking back at the hardware that will be used to make these cloud servers, last generation surplus parts are perfect for this type of implementation. Each individual server (or node in grid terms) has modest requirements similar to that of a netbook computer. The tasks that these servers will perform are well defined and it is the combination of hundreds or thousands of these servers that provide the real horse power behind the cloud. We see that netbooks can cost as little as $200 and I see no reason why these small cloud servers can not hit the $100 mark as they need no LCD display or peripheral ports, they can use cheaper standard 3.5″ hard drives and need no real casing to speak of (depending on the deployment method.) These units can even be racked in shelves of 4 units with direct DC power to each board. There would only need to be a single AC to DC inverter per rack with UPS to ensure power is flowing to the rack as a whole. The amount of heat being created will be far less than with a typical server, and it may even be possible to get the thermal thresholds down to the level where a bare heat-sink (without fans) can be used for the processors. This will also drastically reduce the amount of cooling needed in the data center. The possibilities are literally endless and it gets me excited just to think about this type of stuff.

Of course, all of this is dependent on the intelligence and robust fault tolerance built into the cloud software layer. As I said before, Google has already done this and has been using a similar infrastructure for a long time, so it is not a pipe dream. It is up to the individual hardware vendors such as Sun, HP and Dell to design and deliver a cloud server that will meed the needs of future cloud computing infrastructures. They will also need to deliver it at a cost that reflects the level of commodity the server now represents in the data center.

Oh, one more thing. I just wanted to note that it is not written anywhere that x86 has to be the processor architecture standard for this new breed of cloud servers. I can easily see a custom designed ARM processor fitting the bill.

How is virtualization green? Can it help your business? How do you implement green computing?

Over the years, the heavy reliance on computers and servers has increased exponentially. With that reliance comes an increase in the overall number of machines in service. The server side of the business has ballooned recently to the point where businesses are faced with concerns such as electricity consumption, cooling and space constraints. Although the overall power (or capacity) of servers has grown rapidly over time, the efficient usage of these servers had not.

In most organizations, server utilization was in the low double digits. Very few businesses were able to utilize 80% or more of a server’s capacity, yet that server still consumed a lot of electricity and produced a lot of heat. Unfortunately, most applications are not designed to play nice with other applications and co-exist on the same server. This leaves quite an open door with regards to a solution. How can you cram more applications onto a single server thus raising the utilization? Furthermore, how can you do this and consume less electricity and produce less heat?

The answer is virtualization. The beauty of this solution is that you combat all of the above mentioned problems while adding some resiliency. Virtualization is the conversion of a physical machine to a virtual machine which is then placed on a host machine. Each host machine can contain several virtual machines. These virtual machines run isolated from each other, but share the physical resources of the host machine (such as RAM, CPU, Disk Space, Network Cards, etc.) This allows you to condense the number of servers (now virtual) that can run on a single physical machine. This will also have the side effect of raising the utilization of that host machine as more workloads are put on it.

An easy way to conceptualize virtualization is an office suite application. Years ago, it was not uncommon to have a typewriter for word processing, a ledger for tracking finances and an easel with a drawing pad for presentations. All of these took up a lot of space and they were not utilized all of the time. This is inefficient. Imagine if you could get all three to take up the same small space (footprint) and allow them to be used as needed without taking up more space. Along comes the office suite on a computer. Now you can do word processing, spreadsheets and presentations all within the same application on the same device. No additional space or resources are needed. This is an example of how virtualization works.

Take that approach to a web server, file server, DNS server, authentication server, mail server, etc. Those five applications typically required four or five servers depending on what operating system they ran and what applications were on them. With virtualization, we create separate virtual machines for each application, then host them all on one physical machine. If our mail server virtual machine crashes for any reason, it won’t affect the other virtual machines on the host. Each virtual machine is an isolated instance with it’s own operating system and application stack. Although all virtual machines on a host share the host’s resources, they cannot tresspass on the resources of another virtual machine.

So now we have five virtual machines running our critical applications on a single physical host machine. Wha happens if the mother board on the physical machine dies? Logically all of the machines on the host would die as well. This is where we extend the benefits of virtualization into a cluster of virtual hosts. Instead of one physical machine, we have two physical machines tied together in a cluster with shared storage connected to each. The virtual machines reside on the shared storage. If one physical machine dies, the control of the virtual machines on that host are passed to the second physical host. The second host can now power on the virtual machines that failed (since it also has control of the shared storage) and we’re back up and running. There is a lot more magic that goes on in the back end to make this happen, but I am just illustrating the functionality of the solution.

So in the end, we were able to reduce five servers down to two servers. In reality, we could place a lot more virtual machines on a physical host. Let’s say that we have three of each of the five original servers I talked about in order to service our entire business. That is fifteen servers in total. We would still use the above logic and place about half on one physical server, and the rest on the second. With this configuration, when one physical server fails, only half of the virtual machines go down and have to be spun up again on the remaining host. This ensures that our business continues as normal with minimal impact on the end user experience.

With fifteen servers condensed on to two physical servers, our electricity consumption has dropped to less than twenty percent of what it was. The heat produced by the servers has also dropped about as much, so the cooling requirement is eased as well. Lastly, we are using much less space to house two servers and a shared storage pool than fifteen servers. We also now need less servers, so less raw materials are used to make those servers. What do you get when you reduce electricity consumption, heat production, raw material usage and physical space (land)? You get a very green solution that is often referred to as Green IT or Green Computing. Within that space, there are vendors that further the ‘green level’ of the individual parts to bring you Green Storage, Green Servers, RoHS compliant machines, power management products and much more. The ability to green part of your business is increasing every day and one of the fastest and most stable ways to accomplish this is through virtualization.

Why becoming a cloud software developer can be a good idea.

Everyone knows that the longevity and ultimate success of a platform lies in the developers willing to create on that platform. Creating a healthy developer ecosystem in which both the developer and the platform vendor can grow and prosper is very important. No one knows this better than Microsoft. It has long been their mantra that “developers, developers, developers” are the key to success. With most of the new large scale websites and platforms being launched on open source platforms and now the cloud, this is becoming even more important.

If you just do some casual research, it is easy to see that the largest and most heavily trafficked sites on the web are written in languages such as PHP, Ruby on Rails or even Java, and these are all deployed on open source platforms. Which version of Unix or Linux they reside on isn’t important. What is important is that developers are migrating in droves to these languages and frameworks, and new developers are learning these languages and frameworks instead of the typical Microsoft .NET stuff. So how does this relate to cloud computing?

Well, whether it was by virtue of luck or actual planning, most of the cloud computing vendors (if not all but Microsoft shops) chose to deploy their infrastructures on open source platforms. Google’s App Engine, long the bastion of true could computing is mainly a Python development platform. The underpinnings are all open source, and Google does contribute significantly back to the cause. Amazon’s Web Services are also built upon solid open source foundations, and the majority of platforms that can be deployed in EC2 instances are Linux distributions. These open source platforms were chosen when language/framework pairs were developed and launched, such as Ruby on Rails, Python on Django, and even Groovy on Grails. These frameworks have provided a solid base upon which to build cloud computing applications and services.

So why can it be a good idea to become a cloud software developer? I would say that there are several reasons to do so, not the least of which is marketability. The hype around cloud computing is at fever pitch, and there are many reasons for it. The root cause is the promise of increased efficiency at a lower price point. One often downplayed benefit that I feel is the most important benefit is flexibility. With cloud computing, the promise of true flexibility and scalability has finally been reached, and the multiple layers of abstraction from the hardware and operating system have granted developers the freedom to focus on their code, not the underlying stuff. By understanding the concepts of developing in the cloud, you have opened yourself up to a new market that is akin to a dam about to burst.

Businesses are moving to the cloud (whether private, public or hybrid) at a break-neck pace, and positioning yourself as a competent developer in this space can only pay off. It may even pay off huge. Just remember that tying yourself to a particular vendor or platform is not the best way to approach. You should focus on a language and framework that is common to most or all cloud infrastructures and leverage your knowledge of development as a whole to pitch your skills as wide as possible. Understanding the benefits and limitations of the cloud will allow you to avoid costly mistakes, and your superiors will see you as the ‘go to person’ for the next wave of IT.

TheLadders.com Recruits 3PAR and Saves on Storage – Online Job Search Engine Cuts Total Storage Costs by 50%

3PAR, the leading global provider of utility storage, announced today that TheLadders.com, the world’s leading online service catering exclusively to the $100k+ job market, cut their total cost of storage in half by replacing their legacy storage infrastructure with 3PAR Utility Storage. The online job search website deployed 3PAR Utility Storage in conjunction with server virtualization from VMware as part of a datacenter virtualization initiative. This initiative reduced the company’s storage capacity requirements by 66%, which also reduced storage administration time. In addition, by consolidating onto a single, highly virtualized 3PAR InServ^® Storage Server, TheLadders.com was able to eliminate the use of separate arrays for different applications and reliance on costly consulting services.

“By allowing us to cut our storage TCO by 50%, 3PAR was clearly the most cost-effective solution,” said Frey Kuo, Director of Information Technology and Operations, TheLadders.com. “However, it wasn’t only about the financial benefit. With 3PAR, we now have the ability to add storage at the drop of a hat and the platform’s superior reliability and high performance protects our critical end-user experience.”

With their legacy storage environment, TheLadders.com had to justify the roadmap for data growth on a per-project basis since the total lifetime capacity required for each individual project had to be purchased up front. This situation limited the number of projects that could be initiated in any given year due to cost constraints associated with purchasing all of this capacity at the outset. With 3PAR, TheLadders.com is not only able to scale their storage environment painlessly, but they are able to buy additional storage on an incremental basis and only as needed. This allows the leading online job search website to save on up-front capacity purchases, ease roadmap justification, initiate more projects, and reduce the cost of housing, powering, and cooling their storage.

For TheLadders.com, meeting their growing storage requirements by purchasing legacy storage would have required 200% more capacity than was required by deploying 3PAR Utility Storage. With 3PAR Thin Provisioning software, TheLadders.com is able to purchase only the storage capacity it needs, and only when it is actually needed, thereby reducing up-front capacity and energy costs by 75% and lowering storage administration to a fraction of what it was before. Storage configuration tasks that took days or weeks to complete with legacy storage took just hours with their new 3PAR array.

With the website listing more than 8,000 new jobs each week across every industry, it was important that the storage infrastructure at TheLadders.com be scalable while also protecting the end-user experience. Their 3PAR InServ distributes all workloads over all system resources for reliability and high performance. TheLadders.com has found automated rebalancing with 3PAR Dynamic Optimization, in combination with the array’s native mixed workload support, to be extremely beneficial. This has enabled the online job search website to maintain robust and consistent performance and avoid disruption when scaling their storage environment.

“TheLadders.com is one of many Internet and Web 2.0 companies that have come to us looking for cost savings and have stayed with us for our superior simplicity, efficiency, performance, and reliability,” said David Scott, President and Chief Executive Officer for 3PAR. “Legacy vendors are plagued by inefficient, inflexible architectures and a rigid business model. Our customers understand that there is a far better alternative that is well suited for businesses seeking a leaner, more agile approach.”

VMware View Delivers “Follow Me Desktop” for Healthcare Practitioners

Desktop Environments Tied to User Identities Instead of Devices Helps Healthcare Professionals Reliably, Securely Access Information for Better Patient Service

VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW), the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop through the datacenter and to the cloud, today announced that healthcare providers are using VMware View™ to furnish medical staff with reliable access to their desktops, applications and information as they roam from room to room and floor to floor within hospitals to care for patients. Healthcare organizations including Norton Healthcare, St. Vincent’s Catholic Hospital and Riverside HealthCare are using VMware View to help deliver cost-effective, flexible, highly available IT services, ultimately improving patient care. Healthcare provider “follow me” desktops deliver the medical information they need to care for patients, while giving IT staff the ability to easily provision, secure and manage desktops and applications from the datacenter.

VMware View lets businesses run virtual desktops in the datacenter which are then accessed using thick or thin clients. End users see a familiar desktop environment with all their productivity and clinical applications available in a single view. In healthcare environments, where minutes or seconds can make a difference in patient care, it is crucial for staff to be able to quickly and reliably access medical information. VMware View enables healthcare organizations to host virtual desktops on servers in a central location, protecting valuable medical information, while providing secure, mobile desktop environments for medical staff as they care for patients throughout a hospital. Administrators also benefit from being able to manage, provision and update desktops from a central location saving valuable time and resources.

Norton Healthcare Gains Increased Flexibility and Improved Support with VMware View™
Norton Healthcare is the largest health care system in the Louisville, Kentucky region with nearly 10,000 employees and a network of five hospitals and eleven immediate care centers. With nearly 950 virtual desktops deployed, Norton uses VMware View to better service their practitioners at all locations by providing a flexible and reliable desktop model with a single view of all their applications and data in a familiar, personalized environment on any device at any location.

“With VMware View™, our physicians can go to a thin client, login, access a patient list and then walk down the hall to another thin client, and their patient list would be right where they left it,” said Brian Cox, director of customer service for Norton Healthcare. “The staff recognized the benefit of that capability immediately. The moment we switched over to VMware View™, the staff stopped calling us with support issues related to their access to clinical applications being disrupted or disconnected. The overall response was great.”

Additionally, VMware View helps Norton to streamline previously time-consuming tasks like application upgrades. “We have all the virtual machines on the backend, so we can easily push out new software,” said Cox. “Application upgrades are non-events now. Recently, we upgraded one of our main applications—Meditech—and received zero helpdesk calls for the virtual desktops. Everything just runs so much more smoothly with VMware View.”

St. Vincent’s Catholic Medical Center Saves Money and Power with VMware View™
St. Vincent’s Catholic Medical Center is one of New York’s most respected healthcare providers. The St. Vincent system treats nearly 150,000 patients each year and is anchored by St. Vincent’s Hospital Manhattan, which also serves as the academic medical center for New York Medical College. With VMware virtualization platform, the renowned healthcare system virtualized 85 percent of its infrastructure and retired 185 servers in 90 days.

“Implementing our EMR solution required us to refresh our existing desktops so could address the demand for new applications and functions,” said Tony Antinori, vice president of technology and operations, St. Vincent’s Catholic Medical Center. “We took this opportunity to re-evaluate our current solution and look at alternatives that could save us money, help the environment and satisfy the need for a more flexible and accessible model for our clinicians.”

“With VMware View™, we are able to move to a ‘zero footprint’ device, reduce power consumption and provide our emergency staff department an always on and available desktop,” said Kane Edupuganti, director, IT operations and communications, St. Vincent’s Catholic Medical Center. “We plan on continuing desktop virtualization across nearly 5,000 endpoints in order to maximize ROI in areas outside of IT.”

Riverside Medical Center Gains Improved Mobility with VMware View™
A nationally recognized and award-winning hospital with leading programs in heart care, cancer care, neurosurgery and orthopedics, Riverside Medical Center serves nine communities throughout suburban Chicago. Riverside has 17 different locations and two medical campuses and has been successfully using VMware virtual desktops for throughout their organization for over two years.

“Riverside originally decided to move to a virtual desktop solution to avoid an upcoming desktop hardware refresh and to help roll out new applications,” said Wayne Kelsheimer, corporate director, Information Services at Riverside Medical Center. The VMware solution allowed us to centralize our desktop operations and maximize our IT resources. We can provision a desktop in less than 15 minutes without having to be onsite. Our nurses are able to go up to any workstation or mobile medical cart and get their same desktop on any device. We were also able to re-purpose some of our existing desktop devices into thin clients, leveraging the investments we had already made in this equipment.”

VMware View™ 3.1 Streamlines Workflow, Offers Localization in German and Japanese
The latest version, VMware View™ 3.1, now generally available, delivers a client information feature that helps administrators track the location of the access device and location of the caregiver so they can set policies to help streamline processes and workflow. VMware View 3.1 also includes localization in German and Japanese and increased scalability with the ability to accommodate the requirements of organizations with a larger number of VMware View users.

For more information on how VMware View™ solves the unique desktop challenges in the healthcare sector, please visit: http://www.vmware.com/solutions/industry/healthcare/
A VMware “Healthcare Virtualization Information Packet” is also available at www.vmware.com/go/desktop-healthcare-em

VMware vSphere 4 Powers SaaS Solution for TradeBeam

TradeBeam Uses VMware vSphere™ 4 to Create an Internal Cloud that Delivers IT as a Dynamic, Flexible Service

 VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW), the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop through the datacenter and to the cloud, today announced that TradeBeam, Inc., a leading provider of on-demand supply-chain management solutions, is using VMware vSphere™ 4 to power its software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution.
TradeBeam’s SaaS offering provides over 6,000 organizations with import and export compliance, inventory management, shipment tracking, supply-chain event management, and global trade finance solutions.  TradeBeam has embraced cloud computing as the strategic direction for its IT operations, leading the company to evaluate VMware vSphere4 as a platform to transform its datacenter into a cloud infrastructure.  VMware vSphere 4 is designed to aggregate and holistically manage large collections of IT resources – including CPUs, storage and network equipment – as a seamless, flexible and dynamic operating environment.  During the beta program, TradeBeam found VMware vSphere 4 to be extremely effective for managing the company’s heterogeneous environment, which includes high-capacity storage systems and sophisticated networking technologies.
“Cloud computing is the future for us, and VMware vSphere 4 is an ideal platform,” said Nasser Mirzai, vice president of IT at TradeBeam.  “In our business, prospective customers would need to have similar environment to the production systems during the on-boarding phase for their training and process re-engineering for weeks or even months.  In the past, we had to dedicate large amounts of computing resources for each new customer.  It’s very expensive to scale that type of sales model.  VMware vSphere 4 allows us to pool our computing resources in an internal cloud.  We can then carve out a virtualized piece of the infrastructure for any new customer aside from the production systems.  We can manage our resources and increase utilization much more efficiently while helping our customers with their budgets and deployment.”
During the beta program, TradeBeam was particularly interested in VMware vSphere 4 features that maximize efficiency and control.  VMware vStorage Thin Provisioning, for example, can help TradeBeam expand its use of shared storage and reduce storage-related costs by up to 50 percent.  Another new feature, VMware vNetwork Distributed Switch, helps simplify network management and configuration and nearly eliminates the possibility of human error.  Other new features, such as VMware Fault Tolerance, can help TradeBeam ensure high availability and operational resiliency at a fraction of the cost and effort required for traditional tools.
“The capabilities and tools in VMware vSphere 4 really do seem too good to be true,” said Mirzai.  “In addition to the enhancements in efficiency and control, VMware vSphere will give us choice – the flexibility to utilize nearly any type of server, any storage system, and any OS that could help our company.  That’s important because we have a heterogeneous environment with products and solutions from multiple vendors.  The beauty of a cloud is that it aggregates these resources and allows us to deploy internally or with a VMware vCloud service provider, enabling us to choose where we want the application to live.  VMware vSphere 4 will allow us to bring everything together seamlessly so we can run applications more efficiently, accelerate time to market, and optimize reliability and performance.  I’ve found vSphere to be a great fit for our cloud roadmap.”
VMware vSphere 4 offers organizations like TradeBeam an evolutionary, non-disruptive path to cloud computing that helps to decrease IT costs while positioning IT to be a flexible and responsive service provider.  VMware vSphere 4 will enable TradeBeam’s applications to be provisioned via the cloud on-demand and with guaranteed service levels. VMware vSphere 4 is now generally available.  For more information on VMware vSphere please go to http://www.vmware.com/go/vSphere.

VMware vSphere 4 does not currently support Site Recovery Manager, View Manager, View Composer, Lab Manager, Life Cycle Manager, Storage Manager

Just a quick note for those looking to move to vSphere 4 who may have Site Recovery Manager (SRM), Lab Manager, Storage Manager, Life Cycle Manager, View Composer or View Manager. VMware does not currently support these products with vSphere 4. I’ve had a few clients of mine ask about this since our VDI solution works on top of ESX 3.5 and they are wanting to upgrade to vSphere 4. I have recommended that they wait until full compatilibility is assured by VMware. At that point, we will support our product on top of ESX 4.0

The official compatibility matrix shows that support should be available some time in the 2nd half of 2009.

The official software compatibility matrix can be found here: http://partnerweb.vmware.com/comp_guide/docs/vSphere_Comp_Matrix.pdf

If you are looking to upgrade, I would hold off until full compatibility is in the matrix.

3PAR Announces Support for VMware vSphere 4 and Engineering Collaboration to Increase Scalability of Cloud Infrastructures

3PAR, the leading global provider of utility storage, today announced compatibility of 3PAR InServ Storage Servers with VMware’s recently announced VMware vSphere 4, the industry’s first operating system for building the internal cloud. In addition to listing 3PAR InServ Storage Servers on the VMware Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) for VMware vSphere 4, 3PAR and VMware invest in joint engineering projects to bring greater innovation to the market, as exemplified by the VMware vStorage initiative and the recently released adaptive queuing technology which became available in VMware Infrastructure 3.5 and is also included in VMware vSphere 4.

The combination of 3PAR Utility Storage and VMware vSphere 4 will allow customers to build next-generation cloud infrastructures in order to realize the promise of IT as a Service. With cloud-like infrastructures — whether they be internally owned or managed by third parties — companies of all sizes can dramatically reduce their capital and operating expenses, maintain control over service levels, and enjoy a great deal of choice. Customers who have deployed 3PAR Utility Storage in conjunction with VMware software regularly cite enhanced efficiency, flexibility, and ROI amongst the chief benefits.

“With 3PAR and VMware, we have built a virtualized environment that has streamlined our operations while increasing the agility of our infrastructure,” said Tom Ackerson, Systems Administrator at Martin’s Point Health Care. “3PAR’s certification with VMware vSphere 4 means that we can continue to maximize the efficiency of our mission-critical infrastructure while maintaining complete confidence that our 3PAR arrays and VMware servers will work seamlessly together.”

As evidence of the close, customer-oriented relationship between the two companies, 3PAR has worked with VMware on its new adaptive queue depth algorithm. Developed in response to direct customer feedback, this feature — available today in VMware ESX 3.5 Update 4 and to be included in VMware vSphere 4 — dynamically adjusts the LUN queue depth in the VMkernel I/O stack to minimize the impact of I/O congestion detected by the 3PAR InServ(R) Storage Server. As a result, organizations can increase the number of virtual machines and add higher performing applications to their ESX servers when attached to 3PAR arrays.

Some of the other highlights of VMware vSphere 4 will include VMware’s enhanced Storage VMotion(TM) and virtual disk thin provisioning. VMware Storage VMotion(TM) can be administered through VMware vCenter(TM) Server to simplify the process of migrating virtual machine disks from legacy storage arrays to 3PAR InServ arrays with little or no disruption or downtime. As a thin provisioning pioneer, 3PAR is excited that VMware is promoting the enormous benefits of thin provisioning through its new software-enabled thin provisioning capabilities. VMware’s offering complements the range of 3PAR enterprise-class, software- and hardware-based thin technologies — including 3PAR Thin Provisioning software and the 3PAR Gen3 ASIC with Thin Built In(TM) — that have enabled 3PAR’s enterprise-class customers to reduce their total cost of data by up to 50%.

“Highly virtualized storage is the perfect complement to VMware’s flexibility and ROI,” said Benjamin S. Woo, IDC Vice President, Enterprise Storage Systems. “Datacenters that are currently using or planning to use VMware vSphere 4 should consider the combined benefits of deploying 3PAR’s utility storage systems to support their virtualized server environment.”

“With VMware vSphere 4, we are embarking upon a whole new level of business value that will enable IT departments to focus on innovation and rapid responsiveness to changing business demands,” said Parag Patel, vice president, alliances at VMware. “Through our collaboration with 3PAR, VMware vSphere 4 will be able to leverage the built-in capabilities of the InServ Storage Server to enable customers to realize the vision of IT as a Service and to realize incredible levels of efficiency, control and choice.”

“3PAR’s leadership in supporting VMware’s adaptive queue depth algorithm and qualification with VMware vSphere 4 are solid examples of 3PAR’s continued innovation and collaboration with VMware,” said David Scott, President and CEO of 3PAR. “At a time when every organization is looking to do more with less, we are committed to enabling joint 3PAR and VMware customers to push the boundaries of what server and storage virtualization can do for their datacenters.”