VMworld a launching pad for virtualization wares

VMware isn’t the only vendor unveiling technology at its annual conference. Several exhibitors, too, plan to demonstrate new wares at this week’s VMworld conference in San Francisco, which is expected to draw as many as 10,000 IT professionals. (See main story for more details.)

Here are some of the new product highlights:

Provision Networks is introducing a desktop management package called Virtual Access Suite 5.9 that consolidates applications and enables the deployment of desktops from a centrally managed infrastructure consisting of terminal servers and blade PCs, as well as virtual machines from VMware, Virtual Iron, XenSource and Microsoft. The new version is more tightly integrated with VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3 and Virtual Iron, as well as with Microsoft Sharepoint and Active Directory.

The company also is previewing software that will be introduced later this year. The Graphics Acceleration Pack for Remote Display Protocol (RDP) can support Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008. To reduce the latency of RDP, Provision is adding keyboard and mouse acceleration technology and using the Common Information Management (CIM) specification to boot multiple virtual desktops from the same disk image.

Vizioncore, meanwhile, is announcing a new version of its vRanger Pro 3.2 backup and replication software, which backs up VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3 environments, as well as physical machines. VRanger Pro lets administrators schedule regular backups of either the full virtual server image or just the information that has changed, while the virtual machine is running. Images can be stored on a storage area network or sent over a WAN to remote locations to support disaster recovery. The new version supports physical to virtual disaster recovery, in which image-level backups of any physical Windows server are captured, as well as write speed enhancements that reduce restore times by as much as 50%. The new version also uses Microsoft’s Volume Shadow Copy Service to pause applications and quiesce databases to provide consistent backup images. Restores of individual virtual machines and their data stores is now supported.

Vizioncore also is rolling out a new version of its vReplicator replication tool that features a more simplified disaster recovery process, easier failover testing, and improved replication speeds. The company enhanced its virtual machine optimization tool, vOptimizer, which now can reduce Microsoft and VMware virtual machine size by as much as 80%.

VMware competitor SWsoft announced a new version of its virtualization software. Virtuozzo 4.0 dynamically partitions a single copy of the Windows or Linux operating system into virtual private servers. The new version includes a redesigned management interface and clustering options, as well as real-time backups for Linux and Windows. The beta version is expected to be available by the end of September with general availability later this year.

On the storage front, iSCSI vendor Lefthand Networks is introducing an appliance that allows its SAN/iQ to be delivered as a virtual machine. Called the Virtual SAN Appliance for VMware ESX, the device encapsulates the internal and external storage of ESX Server and makes the storage area network available for virtualized, as well as nonvirtualized applications. SAN/iQ clusters the storage available across the virtualized environment, making the information stored on the cluster available in the event of an actual server failure. The appliance, which is expected to be available in the fourth quarter of this year, costs $5,000.