Year: 2014

Red Hat has released version 3.3. of its virtualization platform based on the Kernel-based Virtual Machine KVM hypervisor: Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV). The latest version we covered at virtualization.info was version 3.1 which was released in december 2012, version 3.2 was released in October 2013. Version 3.3. introduces support for OpenStack features in Technology Preview allowing customers to use OpenStack Compute, Storage and Networking features.

Version 3.3. provides the following features and enhancements as detailed in the release notes:

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Together with the announcement that Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager is now generally available, Microsoft also announced that Windows Azure has been validated for compliance with the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standards (DSS) by an independent Quality Security Assessor (QSA).

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Egenera has announced the release of two new versions part of its Egenera Cloud Suite solution, PAN Manager and PAN Cloud Director. PAN Manager which has been updated to version 7.6 provides which provides provisioning, managing and protection of IT infrastructure. PAN Cloud Director provides orchestration, a Service Catalog, a Self Service portal and billing capabilities has been updated to version 2.1.

Egenara now also supports Microsoft’s virtualization platform Hyper-V in addition to many other vendors like CiRBA and Convirture which announced support for Hyper-V as well the last couple of days.

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CiRBA has announced the release of version 8.0 of its capacity management solution, adding support for Microsoft Hyper-V. CiRBA already supported the VMware ESX, IBM PowerVM on AIX and Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV) platforms. CiRBA’s policy-based engine provides the precision required to confidently transform server infrastructure, automatically control VM placements, and predict future capacity requirements.

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Michael Rüefli, a cloud architect working for INSERTO in Switserland has released a paper titled: "System Center 2012 R2 Service Management Automation" on Microsoft TechNet. The Paper which contains 63 pages covers the basic architecture, installation and use of System Center 2012 R2 Service Management Automation (SMA). SMA is a feature introduced with the release of System Center 2012 R2 Orchestrator which integrates into the Windows Azure Pack services and Service Provider Foundation providing Orchestration functionality by running PowerShell workflows. The main purpose of SMA is to automate deployments, like VM, Clouds, Web Sites and databases.

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vCloud Connector (vCC) is VMware’s Software as a Service (SaaS) management tool for VMware environments residing on- or off premise offering Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). vCloud Connector allows you to connect multiple clouds which could be either private or public.

On Monday, January 13, VMware released a video, through VMware Learning YouTube channel, where Simon Momber explains some of the capabilities of the vCloud Hybrid Services focusing on the interoperability offered by vCloud Connector.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTPO4-UGE_A[/youtube]

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In 2013 VMware started delivering their own operated and owned public Infrastructure as a Service service. The service named vCloud Hybrid Service (vCHS) is currently available in the US only. A single datacenter in the UK is running in beta. Additional European datacenters will be rolled out in 2014.

vCHS allows customers to have full control over virtual machines and networking. Announced future services are Disaster Recovery as a Service , ability to backup virtual machines and Desktop as a Service.

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Microsoft Windows Azure entered the Leaders section of Gartner Magic Quadrant (MQ) for Enterprise Application for Platform as a Service. The MQ was published by Gartner January 7, 2014.

This position is  shared with marketleader Salesforce.com. The MQ in total contains  19 PaaS services.

Gartner publishes  Magic Quadrants  on many IT related services and solutions. A MQ provides a high level overview of available solutions in a specific market and discusses their strengths and cautions.

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Today Oracle announced it intends to acquire Corente. Corente is a provider of software defined networking technology for Wide Area Networks (WAN).

Corente’s products include Cloud Services Exchange, which “establishes trusted network services between public or private cloud data centers and any location over any IP network”.

Oracle has been quite active with acquisitions, especially to complete its cloud and virtualization portfolio. In 2012 it acquired Xsigo which does LAN and IO  vitualization. Corente joins Xsigo in the location of the Oracle product portfolio.

Corente customers include British Telecom, Avery Berkel  and ITW (Illinois Tool Works).

The image below is part of a 10 pages PDF presentation.

Read the Oracle press release here.