Businesses that virtualize can increase efficiency and reduce costs by eliminating low- performance/low-efficienc y servers. Less well-known, but equally important, is the parallel advantage of streamlining the legacy power and cooling systems that support virtualized environments. This presentation will discuss how new power and cooling technologies and effective data center planning and design are saving additional electrical costs, sometimes even more than the original savings from virtualization. Learn how to help manage the complexities of a virtualized environment by answering the not-so-obvious questions 'Where should I locate my next server?' and 'Where should I migrate my applications to maximize efficiency?'

NGASI announced it has launched NGASI AppServer Manager 8.1, which automates multiple installations and configurations for Application Servers and Applications on a single server machine, across multiple virtual servers, and across multiple physical servers.

SMC Networks announced that its 10Gigabit fiber and copper adapters for 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) server connections now have the added benefit of offering virtualization acceleration. The 10GbE adapters not only excel at performance, but also thermal management, standards-compliance and affordability: Now the SMC10GPCIe-10BT 10GBASE-T server adapter and the SMC10GPCIe-XFP 10GbE optical server adapter both benefit from a driver set that incorporates virtualization acceleration software that accelerates network traffic in virtualized environments.

Banking institutions in the United States and United Kingdom are using a number of virtualization technologies as a means to help centralize deployment and management of applications, simplify IT infrastructure, and improve overall business continuity of IT systems, reports a new survey released by Microsoft.

Close to three-quarters (71 percent) of U.S. retailers are turning to a broad set of virtualization solutions as a means to save costs, maximize space and generally gain better control of their IT infrastructures, reports a new survey released by Microsoft.

Reflex Security announced an initiative to further develop key visibility and access control functionality in its Reflex VSA (Virtual Security Appliance) Solution. Dubbed 'VISability,' for the ability to enable Virtual Infrastructure Security, the initiative to take the approach that without the ability to visualize both the logical and physical elements of a virtual network, comprehensive security cannot be achieved.

Xsigo Systems and SOFTBANK TELECOM announced that the companies have demonstrated an automated disaster recovery solution that allows VMware virtual machines to be automatically failed over between sites which are over 500 KM apart. Built on a Wide Area Virtualization Infrastructure, the solution accelerates system recovery times, reduces the need for manual intervention, and minimizes business loss due to system downtime.

Qumranet, announced the general availability of Solid ICE - virtualization software that enables corporations to reduce the costs, complexities and risks of desktop PC deployment and management. By centrally hosting desktops in KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) on servers in the corporate data center, Solid ICE (Independent Computing Environment) gives IT administrators' greater control over desktop image management, provisioning management, policy enforcement and security.

Enterprises' ability to realize every last dollar from their network investments by adding new services the moment they are needed is now a reality with a new network virtualization solution from Nortel. Nortel's virtualization solution makes it possible for the many previously separated elements within enterprise networks to be linked together, harnessing the power of each to work together as one, eliminating the need for costly re-engineering when new services are needed.

Secure Computing announced it is working with VMware to provide customers with security gateway virtual appliances for organizations of all sizes. These security gateway appliances for VMware environments will provide customers with a way to implement and manage security for multiple virtual machines, or multiple applications within a virtual machine, through a single gateway. This enables customers to capitalize on the business benefits of VMware virtualization -- such as reduced capital and operating expenses, assured business continuity and a 'greener' carbon footprint -- while ensuring security across the datacenter in ways not possible in a physical environment.

Absolute Performance announced the availability of System Shepherd Version 5.0, Absolute's flagship SaaS delivered software. System Shepherd 5.0 brings many new innovations to application performance management, including the ability to instrument and manage application software operating in VMware, Xen, Hyper-V and Parallels virtualized environments. System Shepherd 5.0's multi-user, multi-tenant web-based dashboard provides valuable performance, management and SLA operating data required to meet the demands of software-as-a-service and hosted application services.

Citrix Systems announced its new NetScaler MPX line of web application delivery systems. The new NetScaler solutions feature a parallel multi-core system architecture that increases datacenter capacity and delivers 2.5 times more web applications with the same infrastructure footprint. Citrix NetScaler MPX also provides unmatched performance when delivering applications that demand the highest security and best end-user experience.

Bob Muglia, senior vice president of the Server and Tools Business at Microsoft outlined the next phase in the company's strategy to enable dynamic IT organizations. As part of this strategy, Muglia announced technology innovations that are designed to expand Microsoft's virtualization capabilities and introduced its use of open source technologies and industry standards to broaden its ability to deliver automated management of heterogeneous IT environments.

FullArmor announced that PolicyPortal delivers a web based end-to-end policy and compliance management solution for Application Virtualization. From a web based console, PolicyPortal provides IT administrators the ability to configure the client and the application, deploy the configuration, and then report on the compliance of those settings. PolicyPortal embeds a Group Policy Object to a sequenced application to easily deploy and configure Application Virtualization agents to client machines.

Virtual machines are wonderful things and server consolidation provides impressive and immediate ROI. However, server virtualization does not come without its challenges. According to Gartner, virtual machine (VM) 'sprawl' is the number one concern when it comes to managing VM environments. Is this a valid concern? What does sprawl have to do with managing the life cycle of virtual machines?

Charles Dickens' classic novel, 'A Tale of Two Cities,' begins, 'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness.' When it comes to information to help business professionals make wise decisions, answer critical questions, and resolve significant problems, today truly is the best and worst of times.

Well, I just realized that I had dived into talking about how to do things with Hyper-V without first taking the time to orient you on some of the terminology used. So I would now take the time to correct that. Note that many of these terms are not used in the user interface / documentation for Hyper-V. The reason for this is that from an operational 'getting things done' point of view you do not need to know about most of this. However, once you start discussing architecture it becomes necessary to know about this stuff.

IBM claims to have created new species of custom-built, industry-standard, Linux-based rack server for Web 2.0 and Cloud Computing companies with massive data centers and tens of thousands of servers, like online gaming, social networks, search and Internet firms. A relatively limited marketplace of maybe a thousand companies with fat wallets capable of shelling out tens of millions for such system. IBM means to replace the white boxes they use now or build themselves like Google does.

The discipline of systems management is composed largely of managing the computing endpoint. The 'endpoint' is traditionally a computer that takes the form of an application/process server or an end-user desktop/laptop. This definition doesn't cover all endpoint types or devices but does represent a large enough population size for the purposes of this discussion.

Matisse Networks introduced virtualization of metropolitan optical networks with a suite of new features collectively known as vMETRO. vMETRO is a collection of capabilities purpose-built to enable the virtualization of IT resources across distributed datacenters and campus networks. vMETRO allows enterprises to cost-effectively implement metro-wide application agility to scale business-critical IT infrastructure beyond the physical power, space, and cooling limitations of a single site.

Quest Software announced that the Provision Networks Virtual Access Suite supports Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, the next-generation hypervisor-based server virtualization platform. Provision Networks' Virtual Access Suite version 5.10 is a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) solution that supports Hyper-V with full integration for brokering, desktop lifecycle management and power management. With this development, the Provision Networks division is further extending Quest's standing in Windows infrastructure management from the desktop to the datacenter.

Emulex announced that its LightPulse family of 8Gb/s and 4Gb/s Host Bus Adapters (HBAs) support Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 and its new Performance and Resource Optimization (PRO) feature. PRO, coupled with Emulex's management pack for PRO, enables administrators to monitor and control the allocation of virtualized servers connected to a storage area network (SAN). This enables customers to manage the performance of their virtualized infrastructure. Emulex's management pack for PRO provides Virtual Machine Manager with the I/O connectivity information needed to improve the placement and migration of virtual machines based on storage requirements and available resources.

Egenera announced the availability of VMware virtualization on Egenera systems with full support from Egenera and its resellers. Under the companies' original equipment manufacturing (OEM) agreement announced in 2007, customers can purchase VMware Infrastructure 3, the data center virtualization and management platform, with the Egenera BladeFrame system, a platform designed to support large-scale virtualized deployments of critical applications with high levels of availability and scalability.

Parallels announced that Solar Virtualization Technologies Group (VTG), a Platinum partner in the Parallels Service Provider Partner Program, is using Parallels technologies to launch new software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions for small and medium businesses (SMBs). Parallels Automation datacenter software provides a centralized operations and business management system, which enables Solar VTG to offers its customers integrated mobile and messaging services that include Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SharePoint and Blackberry Enterprise Server. Solar VTG provides a single interface to its customers who are actually accessing services that rely on several internal and external application servers and systems.

IGEL announced a broad range of thin client models supporting the important Citrix XenDesktop virtualization standard. With all of its 22 models now supporting Citrix XenDesktop, IGEL's digital services approach allows organizations to offer the best user experience combined with desktop resilience and remote management.

VKernel announced the launch of its Global Channel Partner Program for value-added resellers (VARs), systems integrators, and consulting firms. The program enables channel partners to broaden their solution offerings and grow revenue opportunities with VKernel's innovative systems management solutions for VMware virtual server environments.

Embotics announced its membership in the Microsoft Startup Accelerator Program. Stewarded by the Emerging Business Team (EBT) at Microsoft, the program is designed to connect high-potential startups committed to the Microsoft platform to an extensive support network. This program provides access to Microsoft people and programs, guidance on future directions and support to accelerate their success.

What I had hoped to be able to publish today would be an article describing how to configure and use ESX's software iSCSI initiator as a failover path for Fibre Channel, so that if the Fibre Channel fabric completely failed VM traffic would automatically failover to software iSCSI. I thought that this would be a great, low-cost way to add another layer of redundancy to your VMware ESX environment. Unfortunately, I can't make it work.

'Until 2008, VMware was the only choice, their hypervisor cost thousands of dollars, and they had the market to themselves,' says Citrix CTO Simon Crosby in this Exclusive Q&A in the run-up to the 3rd International Virtualization Conference & Expo next month in New York. 'In 2008, Citrix and Microsoft bring customers an open architecture, a price/performance and feature set that is difficult to beat, and a powerful channel that can deliver customers a real choice for their virtual infrastructure for the first time,' he adds.

People signaled strong interest in VoIP, virtualization, and WAN optimization technologies, according to a study released by Network Instruments and NetQoS. The survey of 117 network engineers and IT executives found: when asked which emerging technologies present the greatest monitoring challenges, most respondents (38 percent) identified virtualization, while 24 percent were concerned with Unified Communications, followed by MPLS (14 percent).

Mosaic Technology announced V-Accelerate, a comprehensive virtualization program to help companies implement data center virtualization. V-Accelerate combines planning, design, component acquisition, and implementation. Using VMware as a foundation, V-Accelerate uses defined processes, predictable cost, and a knowledge transfer model to deploy virtualization.

DataCore Software announced that Woodgrain Millwork has purchased and deployed its flagship SANsymphony software from DataCore authorized partner Right! Systems (RSI). RSI is a solution provider of virtualization solutions. 'SANsymphony allowed us to add a new EMC array and make it work effectively with our existing HP EVA storage, improving and harnessing the combination to run in tandem and support our mix of database, ERP and VMware server systems,' said Chip Olsen, senior systems engineer, Woodgrain Millwork. 'With SANsymphony now in place, we have been able to significantly improve performance and address the uptime and availability issue for our SQL servers and ERP application - something mission-critical to our operations.'

Marathon Technologies announced the general availability of everRun VM , the fault-tolerant software for server virtualization. With the release of everRun VM, Marathon is eliminating one of the major barriers to broader server virtualization adoption - the lack of reliable high availability for virtual servers - and providing customers with the assurance that critical data, networks and applications will be protected in virtual server environments.

Vizioncore announced the availability of vCharter Pro, the enterprise-class, performance monitoring and management solution for large-scale virtualization deployments. Powered by Foglight from Quest Software, vCharter Pro provides views of different infrastructure layers from entire data centers through to ESX clusters, resource pools, shared storage and even individual virtual machines. vCharter Pro also allows administrators to pinpoint resource contention among CPU, memory, disk or NICs as well as capture key metrics over time for historical trending and reporting.

NetEffect announced that it has joined the VMware Community Source program. NetEffect joins other industry partners in collaborating with VMware on a source-code level, ultimately enabling NetEffect to maximize the performance and functionality of its power-efficient 1Gb and 10Gb accelerated Ethernet adapters for VMware virtualization.

Neterion announced that drivers for its 10 GbE adapters are embedded in the initial release of Windows Server 2008. In addition, Neterion's adapters are supported in the beta release of Microsoft Hyper-V, the hypervisor software for server virtualization that will be available with various versions of Windows Server 2008.

Brocade announced that it is working with Microsoft to develop a management pack to incorporate the Performance and Resource Optimization (PRO) feature within Microsoft's System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008. PRO can help address alerts from hardware, operating systems and applications by shifting virtual machine resources using knowledge-based policies and rules. By extending many of the Brocade data center fabric and Host Bus Adapter (HBA) management capabilities into Virtual Machine Manager, this solution will help server administrators improve the management of their physical and virtual resources in data centers.

Lancope announced an integration between StealthWatch and HyperSwitch. The interoperability leverages NetFlow to deliver visibility into virtual networks to detect network congestion issues, policy violations, worm outbreaks and other security-related incidents. By combining Lancope and Montego Networks' layered security capabilities, organizations can assess virtual machines responsible for disrupting network performance and quarantine offenders before causing any impact to network availability.

nSolutions will showcase how its flagship change and configuration management offering, Network Ontology and Virtualization Appliance (NOVA), seamlessly integrates into a live, multi-vendor environment in support of TNC's new IF-MAP Protocol. nSolutions will demonstrate how NOVA updates and audits all changes to network and server configurations, alerting network IT operations in real time, to policy violations, security threats, and vulnerabilities.

eXludus announced the exclusive availability of SimpliGrid software to members of the Bioinformatics Organization (Bioinformatics.Org), an organization that develops and maintains computational resources to facilitate worldwide communications and collaborations between people of all educational and professional levels. SimpliGrid software is the first product that simplifies the provisioning and use of clusters and grids for Microsoft Windows XP and Vista environments.