Avastu Blog: Sustainable Global Clouds

EWeek's labs picked up some neat collection of VMware's virtual appliances. Although I don't seem to read anywhere what the criteria might have been, it is important to note that these appliances are a security/application centric collection, I haven't been visiting the marketplace for some time so do go there and check out some stuff there. They have a huge collection out there. Here's EWeek's top 5

Search my older post and you'll find that I had already suggested VMware and other vendors to go for several versions of hypervisors. VMware has taken the stride towards mobile devices, which is definitely a good thing but that market is a flooded market. Desktop PCs are in need for some rationalization. I have, some times, hard time convincing customers why they should move towards VDI- while many are lately wondering if Cloud Apps, hosted via their internal, on-premise Cloud Infrastructure or Off Premise Clouds - a typical hosted scenario. Either ways they just don't care anymore, so is the case of the Clouds. Clouds don't care either. That makes it a perfect match, especially the new beast we all want to comprehend, the beast which only the likes of Microsoft has understood rather well, the SMB market. SMB's are typically the "I don't care, you fix it and fix it now" kind of folks. Taming that market segment is a real pain. They are sometimes hard to un...

Ed has some good tips. Last time I spoke to Ed, I got to understand that he's on to a lot more things such as writing a book and some toolkit. Mike Hoesing has beaten him to it there since his book on Virtualization Security is already up there on Amazon. I am looking forward to Ed's book as well though. Anyways, like I said, last when I spoke to Ed was about pushing the virtualization security initiative here in the EMEA. I have spoken to several little and bigger players, including our own large team ("our" as in my employer ) of some 500+ security experts,who are doing lots RA's for firms across the globe. Anyways here's Haletky's article: The roles and permissions within the VI Client do not necessarily map to users and groups within the service console or management appliance. Roles and permissions are quite a bit different actually and do not always map one to one. When you directly connect the VI Client to a VMware ESX or VMware ESXi host you will ...

New features of VRM include: Extensions that support key virtual desktop components included in Citrix XenDesktop™ and VMware’s virtual desktop infrastructure. Microsoft’s Hyper-V support. The VRM Infrastructure Organizer, for fast, efficient mapping of an organization’s virtual assets into its existing shared infrastructure. VRM automates the management of virtual servers and desktops, from the time they’re created until they’re decommissioned. Innovations such as VRM’s desktop extensions help IT organizations deliver high value and competitive advantages to their customers. "Desktop virtualization is taking off, and large scale deployments see high rates of change. These deployments need management tools to be efficient and economical," said Rachel Chalmers, research director, infrastructure, the 451 Group. "DynamicOps' VRM can let desktop groups choose best-of-breed point products while retaining overall control of their environment." VRM desktop extensions...

It's Saturdays and I'm sure Stephen won't be upset at me for that title :-) good luck at Tripwire, Stephen! "Stephen is the perfect fit for Tripwire as we continue to extend our leadership in the virtualization market, seeking new and different ways to address the growing customer needs in the market," said Dan Schoenbaum, COO of Products for Tripwire. "We are excited to have Stephen on board to help us further expand and execute on our corporate strategy to address our clients' growing virtualization needs." Stephen is co-author of two books on virtualization, "Essential VMware ESX Server" and "Scripting VMware Power Tools: Automating Virtual Infrastructure Administration." In addition, he is Technical Editor of "VMware ESX Server: Advanced Technical Design Guide" and a contributing author to "How to cheat at configuring VMware ESX Server." A respected expert on virtualization technology, Stephen is a frequen...

As a first step in the companies' expanded relationship, VMware would work with HP to integrate HP BTO software with VMware vCenter Lab Manager, which provides self-service access to a library of pre-configured virtualized application environments, allowing teams of users to check out systems on-demand while IT maintains administrative control. With Lab Manager, organizations can reduce hardware costs, automate manual provisioning tasks, and accelerate application development and test cycles. In addition, VMware and HP would jointly develop and bring to market enhanced virtualization management offerings for VMware vCenter and HP BTO customers based on the HP BTO application and infrastructure discovery technologies (HP Discovery and Dependency Mapping) to better manage their VDC-OS environments. A VDC-OS enables businesses to efficiently pool all types of hardware resources (including servers, storage and network) into an "internal enterprise cloud" that acts like a sin...

STORServer introduced an upgrade to its STORServer Agent for VMware Consolidated Backup, designed to increase usability and performance. Highlights of these upgrades include a new license server and online help system. Introduced in September 2007, the STORServer Agent for VMware Consolidated Backup integrates IBM's Tivoli Storage Manager and VMware Consolidated Backup. To address the challenges of protecting VMware environments, the Agent improves the usability of Consolidated Backup by providing centralized management, reporting and scheduling of virtual machine backups and eliminates cumbersome pre- and post-processing integration scripts. The Agent includes an easy to use graphical user interface for the management and reporting of virtual machine backups; a scheduler; and a database containing client configurations, logs and scheduling information. Source