Service providers, data centers and enterprises are increasingly embracing virtualization to increase hardware processing utilization and efficiency, unify networking and server farms, and reduce complexity and total cost of ownership. The Xen hypervisor is a fast and secure infrastructure virtualization solution that enables multiple instances of the same or different operating systems on a single processor. Each operating system will not only run completely independently, but also securely so that the software running on one operating system is protected from that on another operating system. Multiple applications, therefore, can run on a single processor, but operate completely independently from each other. This allows developers the opportunity to create compact, multi-function systems solutions that take full advantage of multi-core processors while minimizing power consumption. For example, a base station can be designed to provide both 3G and LTE services with a single processor, ultimately reducing the cost and complexity of the hardware, while enhancing the flexibility and capability of the system solution.

NetLogic Microsystems’ XLP and XLP II multi-core, multi-threaded processors are the industry’s most advanced, highest performance communications processors that feature an innovative quad-issue, quad-threaded and superscalar architecture with out-of-order execution capabilities. This uniquely superior architecture makes the industry-leading XLP and XLP II processor families ideally suited for the virtualization of multiple applications and multiple operating systems on each of the high-performance cores. The flagship XLP processor family in 40nm operates at up to 2GHz and delivers cache-coherent scalability of up to 128 NXCPUs™, while the next-generation XLP II processor family is designed for up to 2.5GHz and scalability up to 640 NXCPUs in the state-of-the-art 28nm process.

The Xen hypervisor is a thin software layer that resides between the operating system and the processor, thus providing an abstraction layer that allows each processor to run as multiple virtualized processors. As a unique open-source technology, the Xen hypervisor is developed collaboratively by a broad community comprising leading system original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), software and application providers, and semiconductor vendors. The Xen hypervisor from NetLogic Microsystems is freely accessible through the Xen open-source community. This will enable customers and third-party developers to easily incorporate and extend their systems solutions using the best-in-class XLP and XLP II multi-core processors.

“We are pleased to spearhead and pioneer the all-important virtualization efforts for MIPS64 multi-core communications processors. Because our embedded multi-core processors are designed to deliver the highest performance per core, they lend themselves particularly well to virtualization techniques by our leading customer base,” said Chris O’Reilly, vice president of marketing at NetLogic Microsystems. “Our Xen hypervisor extends our technology leadership and helps our customers and partners create new and innovative solutions with our revolutionary XLP and XLP II processor families.”

NetLogic Microsystems’ Xen hypervisor will be submitted to the open source community in the first quarter of 2012.

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3. Desktop Virtualization Using Citrix XenClient and Intel Core vPro Processors

The survey of government IT decision makers indicates that virtualization initiatives are picking up momentum. Eighty-two percent of Federal and 77 percent of state-and-local IT professionals say their agencies have already implemented some server virtualization, leading to an estimated savings of 19 percent of their IT budgets – $15 billion across government. By 2015, virtualized workloads are expected to nearly double from 37 to 63 percent – which would boost the savings to an estimated $23.6 billion government-wide.

According to the report, 57 percent of Federal and 64 percent of state-and-local respondents say server virtualization takes priority over desktop virtualization. While government agencies have plans to implement some form of desktop virtualization, less than one in 10 plan to virtualize all applications for all users. However, if desktop virtualization provides just half of the savings of server virtualization, agencies could save 9.5 percent of their IT budget or $7.5 billion.

“When agencies do begin developing their virtualization plans, they should look beyond servers and consider desktop virtualization as well,” said Mark Weber, President, U.S. Public Sector, NetApp. “The more opportunities that agencies are able to recognize and incorporate into their modernization frameworks, the greater their long-term benefits.”

Despite the proven results and clear savings opportunity, only 48 percent of Federal and 39 percent of state-and-local respondents believe that they have the funding needed to meet their server virtualization goals, and that’s not the only barrier. The most common challenge that agencies face for both server and desktop virtualization is legacy application migration. Security is also a hold-up, but more so for Federal agencies than for state/local – 41 percent of Feds cited security concerns, as opposed to 24 percent of state-and-local respondents. Only 63 percent of respondents say their management fully supports server virtualization adoption. Fewer than half report that their agency has a formal policy or common framework for server virtualization.

“Virtualization and consolidation are critical components of an effective cloud strategy, resulting in tangible benefits,” said Susie Adams, Microsoft Federal’s Chief Technology Officer. “If agencies are thinking vigorously and broadly about combining server consolidation, data center consolidation, and private cloud infrastructures, the industry can realize tremendous leaps in scalability, cost savings, improved services, and integrated management. In many ways this begins with a smart approach to virtualization.”

The report also reveals that while virtualization yields big savings, good things come to those who wait. Fifty-seven percent of participants say they expect to wait one year or more to realize savings once a server virtualization solution is fully implemented and operational.

“Virtualization Vacuum: The 2012 Government Virtualization Study” is based on an online survey of 302 government agency CIOs, CTOs, IT directors/supervisors, IT managers, and data center managers conducted in October 2011.

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"The highly dynamic nature of cloud infrastructure has outpaced traditional operations management disciplines, requiring customers to think differently about how to manage their virtual and cloud environments," said Rob Smoot, director, product marketing, Enterprise Management, VMware. "The VMware vCenter Operations Management™ Suite provides customers with greater visibility ‘under the hood’ of their infrastructures, and it provides the actionable intelligence customers need to optimize efficiency, enable compliance and proactively manage service levels."

Unveiled in October 2011, VMware's new management portfolio redefines IT management by embedding and integrating management into the platform, converging disciplines to streamline processes and applying analytics to help customers achieve the agility and economics of cloud computing. Updates to the VMware vCenter Operations Management Suite include deeper integration of capacity and configuration management capabilities and new "application awareness" to enable customers to optimize infrastructure operations based on application needs.

"The next step in our journey to cloud computing is to streamline and automate the operations of our cloud infrastructure," said Matthew Cunningham, Senior Vice President of IT, CareCore National. "The VMware vCenter Operations Management Suite gives us better visibility into key performance, health and efficiency indicators across the operational and infrastructure environments and allows us to achieve higher service levels of our business-critical applications from a single management console."

The VMware vCenter Operations Suite is tightly integrated with VMware vSphere®, and includes the following new features:

• Tighter integration of performance, capacity and configuration management
  VMware continues to deliver on its strategy of converging management disciplines with deeper integration of VMware vCenter Capacity IQ™ and VMware vCenter Configuration Manager™ into the vCenter Operations Management Suite. This helps customers to identify emerging problems, “right size” infrastructure resources, and identify and remediate performance issues caused by configuration changes.
• New dashboard and smart alerts for quicker, more effective health analysis
  Leveraging the deeper integration of capacity and configuration management data, VMware has enhanced the vCenter Operations Management dashboard to provide more comprehensive views into health, risk and efficiency of cloud infrastructure. New smart alerts provide proactive notifications of emerging health, performance and capacity issues. Automated root cause analysis can identify the offending metric across all layers of the infrastructure.
• "Application Awareness" optimizes infrastructure for business-critical applications
  The VMware vCenter Operations Management Suite includes a new application awareness capability that can automatically discover and map the relationships and dependencies between applications and the infrastructure components that support them. This can help customers optimize infrastructure operations such as security management and disaster recovery based on individual application needs.

Pricing and Availability
The updated VMware vCenter Operations Management Suite is available in four editions to meet the IT operations needs of customers of all sizes – from small and midsized businesses (SMBs) to large enterprises. List prices start at $50 per VM. Updates are also available as a free upgrade for current VMware vCenter Operations customers.

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1. A Tech Preview of vCenter Operations for View and an overview of vCenter Operations.
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3. Using the VMware vCenter Database Pre-Upgrade Checker

The newest VMware course from TrainSignal teaches a beginner in virtualization how to install, configure and maintain a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). While this is an essentials course, students can expect to finish the course with a working knowledge of View components, virtualization using ThinApp, and everything necessary for using VMware View 5 on the job, on a regular basis.

By centralizing end-user desktops as virtual machines, VMware View allows for better, more efficient management of VDI with the potential for drastic reductions in support costs. The course covers new features that come with VMware View 5, including one lesson dedicated to demonstrating how to upgrade to View 5 from previous versions.

Students will find a range of topics for learning what is new in View 5 and how to manage virtual desktops:

• Persona Management
• PCoIP Optimization
• Monitoring and Troubleshooting View
• Virtualizing Applications with ThinApp

Students will have the opportunity to familiarize themselves with the different components of View and how to install them. Managing user profiles and data, location-based printing setup, and maintaining pools are each covered in distinct, individual lessons.

Since this is an essentials course, the successful student only needs experience managing desktop operating systems with Active Directory, and a basic understanding of a vSphere environment. These prerequisites are not required to take the course, but may prove helpful as the course utilizes vSphere 5 with shared storage in a Windows 2008 R2 Active Directory environment.

There are two instructors for VMware View 5 Essentials Training, virtualization experts Brian Knudtson and Lane Leverett. Lane Leverett (VCDX #53, VCAP4-DCD, VCA4-DT, VCP4-DT) has over 13 years of experience as a server, network and virtualization engineer. Lane currently implements and designs VMware infrastructure, Cisco networking, and various storage solutions. He contributed to vSphere Security Design Training for TrainSignal, and has lasting passion for evangelizing the benefits of virtualization while helping customers as a senior systems engineer.

Brian Knudtson (Quadruple VCP, VCAP4-DCA, VCAP4-DCD, VCA4-DT, VCP4-DT) is a co-founder of the Omaha VMware User Group, and has also sat on VMware's Partner Technical Advisory Board. With over 10 years of experience in IT, Brian has also received the vExpert award. He has concentrated on virtualization technology for the majority of his career, and writes for TechTarget, SearchVMware.com, and his personal blog.

The VMware View Training course contains 15 lessons in nearly 8 hours of video instruction. Students will receive 2 DVDs of video lessons. Each lesson is available in several formats, iPod Video, Mp3 Audio, .WMV and high quality AVI, allowing students to use course materials on a variety of devices. Students can view all materials online after signing up for the course, ensuring instant access.

VMware View 5 Training is available for just $397. TrainSignal backs each and every course with their exclusive 90-day Total Experience Guarantee. All courses are shipped worldwide at no charge.

About TrainSignal: Founded in 2002, TrainSignal provides computer-based "Total Experience" training that gives individuals the tools and confidence to tackle real-world challenges, pass their certification exams and succeed in today's competitive global IT market.

TrainSignal offers a wide range of computer training packages covering Microsoft, Cisco, Citrix, CompTIA, VMware, and Microsoft Office. In addition to its Windows Server 2008, Exchange Server 2010, and Windows 7 courses, TrainSignal offers training for over fifty different training courses including VMware vSphere training, Cisco CCNA training, Citrix XenDesktop training and more.

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The new pricing will be available beginning February 1, 2012, but managed service providers (MSPs) may begin installing it on virtual servers immediately.

In addition, MSPs who have signed up for the StorageCraft MSP Rebate Program will receive a $6 rebate for virtual servers they add (over and above their “base” installation number) during their rebate period.

“Many of our partners asked us to provide separate pricing for virtual servers for ShadowProtect for Managed Service Providers, and this new option is a direct response to that. Our channel partners are important to us, and their feedback is an important factor in our decision-making process,” said Curt James, vice president of marketing and business development at StorageCraft.

ShadowProtect for Managed Service Providers features benefits from the award-winning ShadowProtect product line, such as recovery from bare metal to dissimilar hardware or to and from virtual environments, and it gives MSPs the power to deactivate ShadowProtect licenses remotely from the MSP licensing console.

“Our goal is to make it easier for our partners in the channel to provide virtualization and business continuity solutions to their customers, and providing pricing options tailored to virtualized environments is one way to accomplish that,” said James.

This pricing option will be available to MSPs in North America.

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VMware forum moderator and vExpert Mike Laverick fully explains VMware Site Recovery Manager™ (SRM) 5.0’s failover/failback procedures, walks readers through configuring storage replication with hardware from several leading suppliers, and shows how to efficiently implement fast, automated, centralized disaster recovery. He also draws on his extensive experience to identify common pitfalls and errors, explains why they occur, and shows how to fix them.

News Facts

• The book delivers technical knowledge readers, including expert guidance for utilizing VMware SRM 5.0’s advanced new vSphere Replication (VR).
• The title is available in print, eBook or bundle form at: http://www.pearsonitcertification.com/store/product.aspx?isbn=0321799925
• VMware Press was created to provide a suite of virtualization technology and certification products in multiple languages and formats. Visit http://www.vmware.com/go/vmwarepress for a complete product listing of relevant materials for IT professionals

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Liquidware Labs has developed specialized server-capacity planning software, based on its market-leading Stratusphere™ FIT product and Stratusphere IXD (formerly Designer) technology, for use with Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3.0. The software, called Stratusphere Server FIT with Host Designer, runs exclusively on the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization platform and will help customers and partners assess physical machines for baseline performance. The Liquidware Labs solutions also help rapidly size virtualization requirements and assist in the design of virtual hosting infrastructures.

“Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3.0 brings compelling new performance, reliability, openness and cost benefits to customers and we are excited to extend its reach by collaborating with Liquidware Labs today,” said Navin Thadani, senior director, Virtualization Business at Red Hat. “Customers can now combine the value of our joint solutions for server and desktop virtualization success. We are also especially pleased that Liquidware Labs is offering a free capacity planning tool for server virtualization exclusively for Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization deployments.”

Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization is an end-to-end virtualization solution that enables pervasive datacenter virtualization and significantly enhances capital as well as operational efficiency.

By leveraging Liquidware Labs’ Stratusphere Server FIT with Host Designer, Red Hat furthers its goal of improving scalability and enhancing value for virtualization projects. Customers will be able to measure real-world, actual resource-usage requirements of their existing physical machines—including data on machines; machine groups; hardware findings; application software usage and resource requirements; and virtualization ratings for machines—as the basis for migrating them onto Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization. In addition, a specialized design module will utilize the assessment metrics to design a host chassis for the hypervisor host.

“We recognize that Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization is increasingly taking hold as a foundational platform for many enterprise data center virtualization and private cloud projects,” said Tyler Rohrer, Co-Founder of Liquidware Labs. “Both of our companies share a philosophy of embracing disruptive technologies and delivering innovative but solidly reliable and robust solutions for a dynamic market. Our mutual perspective makes us good collaborators in providing solutions to help drive the guesswork and extra cost out of virtualization projects."

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Today’s unique business environment means leaner IT budgets, while new business initiatives continue to accumulate. The integration of federated and cloud applications means increased complexity, while customers expect a better login and security experience. Businesses need to find new ways to serve identities to their consumer-facing sites, while also supporting their mission-critical internal applications. The RadiantOne platform is uniquely positioned to serve both of those needs through a complete identity service that can manage complex identity systems for a number of business initiatives, both internally and externally-facing.

Radiant Logic attributes the company’s growth to its expanding customer base in the Fortune 500, focused strategic partnerships, and continuous product innovations. This year, Radiant debuted its Cloud Federation Service, a secure token service that enables disparate identity sources to connect to a range of cloud-based applications. The increased adoption of the RadiantOne complete identity service extends the company’s longtime leadership in the virtual directory space.

“Our growth over the past year really demonstrates the strength of our people and our products,” said Radiant Logic CEO Michel Prompt. “And with the planned introduction of RadiantOne Version 6.0, we are poised to expand even more in 2012. We’re thrilled to offer what we’re calling a complete identity service, combining the best of enterprise, meta, and virtual directories into one plug-and-play hub.”

With its model-driven virtualization, automated synchronization server, and advanced caching technology, RadiantOne will continue in 2012 to go beyond the established capabilities of the traditional virtual directory to deliver a federated identity service. In early spring, Radiant will continue to expand features and performance with the launch of RadiantOne VDS+ identity service, enabling customers to use an “identity virtualization wizard” to deploy in a day what used to take months.

“Our customers have always relied on us to provide a key infrastructure service for their internal initiatives,” says Dieter Schuller, VP of Sales. “This year, we had more customers using RadiantOne to enable their customer-facing portals. We aggregate rich information across silos, and deliver a rich customer profile. We’ve found that this is essential for building a portal, and for connecting to secured, context-driven apps in the nascent mobile apps market.”

Radiant Logic will continue to bring together analysts and industry information on identity services in 2012 through additional web-based seminars. In addition, the company is planning an Identity Service tour, a set of events across the U.S. discussing identity management and virtualization. Radiant Logic is also sponsoring the Federal Identity, Credential, and Access Management (FICAM) kick-off this March in Washington, D.C.

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1. Radiant Logic webinar: Virtualization as a Key Enabler of Federated and Claims-Based Identity
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Leostream utilized the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization REST API to natively integrate with Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization.

This integration allows organizations to use Leostream to:

• Inventory Microsoft Windows and Linux virtual machines hosted in a Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization environment
• Control the power state of these virtual machines, using the Leostream Connection Broker
• Utilize the suite of policy actions available in Leostream to assign these virtual machines to users
• Use the SPICE protocol to connect users to these virtual machines

In addition, Leostream Connection Broker 7.5 is available as a virtual appliance that can run directly on a Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Hypervisor, allowing organizations to standardize on the highly scalable Red Hat virtualization platform.

“Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3.0 brings compelling performance, scalability and cost leadership and an open virtualization solution to customers,” said Navin Thadani, senior director, Virtualization Business at Red Hat. “Partnering with Leostream on support for Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3.0 expands the value we’re able to deliver to enterprises around the world and allows them to build out scalable, high-performance VDI environments.”

“Our integration with Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3.0 continues our practice of allowing enterprises to choose the best technologies to reach their business goals and end-user requirements,” said Michael Palin, CEO of Leostream. “The strength of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization and the SPICE protocol are invaluable as the virtualization market grows and more organizations require enterprise-class solutions and a rich multi-media experience.”

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The use of virtualization has exploded in datacenters, resulting in better utilization of existing IT resources while enabling new service delivery models and cloud computing. Organizations seeking higher performance, scalability and lower cost of virtualization are adopting open, cost-effective solutions like Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization in addition to existing platforms and as a result face the complexities of managing multiple platforms. As enterprises evolve from single-vendor virtualized infrastructures to heterogeneous private and hybrid clouds, they will require tightly integrated cross-platform management capabilities to ensure highly reliable, secure and elastic cloud services.

Highlights of the ManageIQ solution with support for Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3.0 include:

• Expanded management capabilities in Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization environments with discovery, performance monitoring, configuration management, policy-based standards enforcement, role based-delegation, infrastructure automation and self-service provisioning.
• Federated management of large and distributed Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization infrastructures from a single pane of glass enabling enterprises to rapidly scale out their Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization deployments.
• Streamlined hybrid cloud management and automation for enterprises running Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization together with other platforms such as Microsoft and VMware.
• Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization certified and optimized to run on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

“Enterprise IT organizations are embracing heterogeneous virtualization platforms and cloud architectures,” said Mary Johnston Turner, IDC Research Director. “Cloud systems management software solutions are becoming critical to transform virtualized infrastructures and automated IT management processes into dynamic, shared service cloud environments.”

“We are excited to have ManageIQ collaborate with us to deliver key capabilities that reduce the complexity of managing virtual and cloud environments,” said Navin Thadani, senior director, Virtualization Business at Red Hat. “Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3.0 and ManageIQ solutions together provide compelling features, performance, scalability and management, generally at lower cost than proprietary virtualization platforms, enabling our enterprise customers to lower the cost of virtualization and enterprise clouds.”

“IT organizations using a patchwork of proprietary and siloed management tools face serious challenges when they move to heterogeneous virtual infrastructures and hybrid clouds,” said Joseph Fitzgerald, CEO of ManageIQ. “Our solutions provide comprehensive, unified management that enables IT to increase agility, accelerate service delivery and maximize resource investments. With our support for Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3.0, we’re giving customers the flexibility to leverage best-of-breed technologies and seamlessly integrate hybrid clouds —while maintaining continuous visibility and policy-based control through a single pane of glass.”

Availability
ManageIQ solutions for Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3.0 are available immediately from ManageIQ at www.manageiq.com/RHEV and from the Red Hat Market Place at http://marketplace.redhat.com/rhev. To download a free, fully supported 60-day trial of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3.0, visit www.redhat.com/rhev3

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