VKernel Introduces End-to-End Virtualization Management with Unified vOperations Suite

Andover, MA (PRWEB) March 06, 2012

VKernel, a subsidiary of Quest Software and the award-winning provider of enterprise-class performance and capacity management products for virtualized data centers and cloud environments, announced today the expansion of its award-winning vOperations Suite TM(also referred to as vOPS). Now available as part of the vOperations Suite are products from VKernels parent company, Quest Software. The enhanced vOPS product suite offers a single solution for VM administrators to manage all infrastructure areas related to their virtualized data centers and cloud environments. Specifically, the unified vOperations Suite extends monitoring capabilities to other hardware areas and layers of the infrastructure including the storage area network (SAN), the guest OS inside a VM and physical servers that have not been virtualized. This unified offering bolsters Quest Softwares position as the leading independent virtualization management company.

Virtualization administrators have long searched for a data center management system to gain visibility across the many layers that make up a virtualized environment: from storage array to guest OS. Previous attempts to gain this holistic visibility have either required multiple vendors, or have involved complex large-scale management platforms that are time consuming and not cost efficient. The enhanced vOPS product line provides VM administrators with an out-of-the-box solution to monitor, capacity plan, chargeback, report on and optimize their entire virtual environment that can be set up in minutes.

Virtualized environments are complex, multi-tiered systems made up of several hardware components and abstraction layers, says Bernd Harzog, The Virtualization Practice. Because resource usage is interconnected, a failure at any point in the infrastructure can cause issues in other areas. The only way to pinpoint where an issue is originating is to have visibility into every infrastructure area that constitutes the virtualized environment.

The new vOperations Suite is built around two broad product lines: vOPS Server and vOPS Storage.

vOPS Server focuses on server management with three editions:

Explorer (Free) Designed to assess the health of a virtualized environment, the Explorer Edition immediately identifies VMs, hosts and datastores that are suffering performance, capacity and efficiency issues. Users can upgrade to a free trial of the Standard Edition to remediate any issues identified with the click of a button.

Standard ($ 549/socket) An easy to install, rapid time to value application that works out-of-the-box to provide virtual server performance analysis, capacity management, optimization and chargeback. vOPS Server Standard Edition(formerly VKernel vOPS) will detect issues in VMs, identify root cause and provide remediation steps that can be automatically implemented.

Enterprise ($ 799/socket) Adds the former Quest Software vFoglight product on to the Standard Edition. Enterprise allows data centers to extend near real-time monitoring into applications such as SQL Server and Microsoft Exchange, the guest OS and non-virtualized servers. The Enterprise edition is vastly scalable and can manage tens of thousands of VMs in a single pane of glass that includes highly configurable dashboards and environment characteristics.

vOPS Storage focuses on storage management with two editions:

Monitor ($ 499/socket) – For VM administrators who require deep visibility into the SAN or are also the storage administrators, vOPS Storage Monitor visualizes the topology from VM to disk. Formerly vFoglight Storage, this solution displays the SAN and the interconnection between various components highlighting where issues are present and the root causes to the problems.

vOptimizer ($ 299/socket) The former Quest Software vOptimizer Pro detects VMs that are running out of disk space, are over-allocated in storage or have misaligned disk block partitions. All of these issues can then be instantly remediated with automation capabilities.

The new vOPS product family provides unparalleled visibility into both non-virtualized and virtual environments, said Bryan Semple, CMO, VKernel. Combining market leading products from our parent company, Quest Software, with VKernels award-winning vOperations Suite allows both companies to provide virtual administrators the ability to proactively manage their entire virtualized environment at a price point that wont break the budget.

Quest Softwares acquisition of VKernel is a win-win for all our customers, said Shayne Higdon, SVP & GM, User Workspace Management and Monitoring, Quest Software. VKernel is a pioneer in offering solutions that allow virtualization administrators to ensure performance and balance costs in their virtualized network environments. The enhanced vOperations Suite will help these customers vastly simplify their day-to-day operations and bolster the support that Quest Software can offer a data center.

General Availability

The new vOPS product family is available now for a 30-day trial download from http://www.vkernel.com/download. vOPS products are available from http://www.vkernel.com and Quest partners worldwide.

About VKernel

VKernel, an independent subsidiary of Quest Software (NASDAQ: QSFT), is the number one provider of virtualization management products for virtualized data centers and cloud environments. The companys powerful, easy-to-use and affordable products simplify the complex and critical tasks of planning, monitoring and predicting capacity utilization and bottlenecks. Used by over 50,000 system administrators, the products have proven their ability to maximize capacity utilization, reduce virtualization costs and improve application performance.

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VKernel Introduces End-to-End Virtualization Management with Unified vOperations Suite

PHD Virtual Releases esXpress 4.0 with Changed Block Tracking and Unified Central Restore GUI

San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) September 4, 2009

During VMworld 2009, PHD Virtual Technologies, provider of the pioneering esXpress data protection and recovery solution for virtual machines, today announced the release of esXpress version 4.0. This major new release of the most scalable and cost effective VMware backup solution on the market has added changed block tracking to reduce the amount of time and resources required to create backups and a unified central restore GUI to restore data faster and easier than ever before.

“PHD Virtual has developed an efficient solution for the data protection and recovery of virtual machines,” said Laura DuBois, program director, storage software, IDC. “By creating small virtual machines – virtual backup appliances (VBAs) – esXpress uses the virtual environment itself to perform the backups, eliminating the need for added hardware or software resources.”

The new esXpress version 4.0 adds enhanced support for VMware vSphere 4 in addition to ESX 3.x, including the ability to track changes to each VMDK using VMware’s change tracking API. By reading only the blocks that have changed, and not scanning the entire virtual disk each time a backup is performed, esXpress shortens the backup window and uses considerably less data I/O while also reducing overall loads on network and SAN resources.

“By utilizing the changed block data API to do incremental backups, esXpress 4.0 significantly reduces critical backup windows and lowers storage contention,” said Ron McKelvey, CTO, PHD Virtual. “This allows for greater scalability and more frequent backups to meet any virtual environment’s data protection objectives.”

esXpress is the first and only third-party solution that uses multiple virtual backup appliances to leverage the VMware changed block API. In addition to changed block tracking, esXpress 4.0 has also added the ability to initiate VM restores from within the Configuration and Deployment Virtual Appliance GUI. The GUI appliance provides unified management of virtual machine recovery tasks, bypassing the need to connect to each individual ESX host’s Service Console. Using this centralized interface, restoring data is simpler, faster, and more scalable than ever before.

Pricing and Availability

esXpress 4.0 is available now with pricing starting at $ 1,000 per host for four concurrent backup streams delivering the best price/performance for data recovery and protection in virtual environments. The product supports unlimited sockets and unlimited cores per host and no additional hardware is required.

PHD Virtual will be demonstrating esXpress during VMworld 2009 in booth number 1502, presenting a breakout session during VMworld 2009 titled, “Why you should be using Virtual Backup Appliances for business continuity and disaster recovery” at 1:30 p.m. on Wednesday, September 2, 2009, and presenting its patent-pending deduplication appliance in the Solutions Exchange Theater on Tuesday, September 1 at 1:10 p.m. You may also learn about esXpress by visiting PHD Virtual’s virtual VMworld booth: http://www.vmworld.com/community/exhibitors/phdvirtual. To download a free trial version of esXpress, please visit: http://www.phdvirtual.com/products/esxpress-virtual-backup.

About PHD Virtual Technologies:

The pioneer of Virtual Backup Appliances (VBAs), PHD Virtual Technologies has been transforming data protection for VMware since 2006. Its award-winning data protection solution, esXpress, is used today by more than 1,600 enterprises worldwide to achieve scalable, high availability and cost effective backup and restore solutions for VMware. In 2008, esXpress was named “Data Protection Product of the Year” by SearchServerVirtualization.com. PHD Virtual also provides a suite of free, virtualization utilities to assist with the administration and management of virtualized environments. PHD Virtual supports global resellers through its Channel Xpress partner program and is a proud VMware Technology Alliance Partner. For more information, please visit http://www.phdvirtual.com.

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PHD Virtual Releases esXpress 4.0 with Changed Block Tracking and Unified Central Restore GUI

The Dingley Press Deploys RELDATA Unified File & Block Storage Solutions for High Availability and Reliable Virtualized Server Environment

Parsippany, New Jersey (PRWEB) September 13, 2011

RELDATA Inc., a leader in unified storage solutions over iSCSI, today announced that The Dingley Press Inc., one of the worlds largest catalog printers, is using RELDATA storage solutions for comprehensive storage and data availability for multiple terabytes of business data in a virtualized computing environment. To eliminate the risk of costly downtime, The Dingley Press implemented RELDATA storage solutions to assure round-the-clock availability for its data-intensive business operations.

The Dingley Press, located in Lisbon, Maine, has served the unique needs of catalogers since 1928. The companys long-term success reflects a high level of customer care and service that includes significant paper and postage savings with a unique rightsize press format, advanced co-mailing and distribution capabilities, and exceptional manufacturing reliability.

To support its complex printing and distribution operations, which deliver more than two million catalogs daily, The Dingley Press uses business systems such as enterprise requirements planning, email communications and many other business applications. The applications are retained in multiple virtual servers that require 24x7availability. Any system downtime drastically impacts company operations.

Downtime for us is extremely costly, said Mike Martell, systems manager at The Dingley Press. To support our operations we required a cost-effective storage solution with reliable failover that would eliminate risk of downtime. RELDATA offered it all. With two RELDATA systems in place we have no single point of failure. One system can go up in smoke and users would never know it. If we lose one system completely, all storage operations move seamlessly over to the other system.

RELDATA offers high-performing, cost-efficient storage solutions designed for physical and virtualized computing environments for mid-market organizations. Based on a fully redundant architecture with no single point of failure, RELDATA provides the high availability needed for managing multiple virtual servers or desktops and other complex applications.

RELDATA delivers a highly reliable, cost-effective solution for companies such as The Dingley Press that demand 24×7 availability, said Victor Walker, CEO of RELDATA. We pride ourselves on addressing our customers’ individual requirements and implementing storage solutions that deliver real value and flexibility on top of the performance and reliability features that are so critical to supporting business operations.”

“Another reason we chose RELDATA was flexibility – they worked with us to achieve our specific objectives, such as helping us develop the tools we needed for the snapshot backup system, added Martell. Other companies may offer fine technology but you’re stuck with a pre-packaged set of features that aren’t necessarily the best fit for your existing requirements. RELDATA offered the right mix of high performance technology, reliability and flexibility at an attractive price.”

The Dingley Press installed a pair of RELDATA storage systems in a failover mirrored cluster, running 8TB (total of 16TB in cluster available). These systems work seamlessly together, maintaining two full copies of the total storage environment and supporting the critical applications running SQL, Exchange, VMware and several industry-specific applications as well as production monitoring for all phases of production and integration with the postal system.

In addition to delivering superior system availability, the RELDATA storage systems also have enhanced The Dingley Presss data backup processes. Data on The Dingley Presss storage volumes is provisioned to file servers and for persistent storage for virtual servers. These are backed up using RELDATA RELbot scripts which take a snapshot of each of the provisioned volumes at the close of the business day. This assures that The Dingley Press always has a current and available backup if restoration is ever required.

For more information RELDATA unified storage solutions, please visit: http://www.reldata.com/products.

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About RELDATA

RELDATA is the innovation leader in unified storage solutions over iSCSI which cost-effectively enable mid-size and distributed enterprises to nondisruptively consolidate, virtualize and protect business data across multi-vendor platforms, providing highly scalable, cost-effective integrated storage, disaster recovery and high availability solutions. The RELDATA Unified Storage Engine (USE) platform allows companies to integrate their existing storage infrastructure to minimize the functional compromise of siloed block and file solutions while reducing administration costs and data protection compliance risk, and preserve current storage investments at lower total costs. Founded in 2005 and headquartered in Parsippany, New Jersey, RELDATA solutions are available through a global network of value added resellers. For more information, visit http://www.RELDATA.com.

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The Dingley Press Deploys RELDATA Unified File & Block Storage Solutions for High Availability and Reliable Virtualized Server Environment

Unified Communications Provider SimpleSignal Launches Online Data Backup Storage Solution

Dana Point, CA (PRWEB) January 18, 2012

SimpleSignal, Inc., the leading cloud-based Unified Communications and Collaboration provider for small and mid-sized businesses, today announced the launch of its managed online data backup and storage service, adding to the growing suite of cloud-based unified communications services.

SimpleSignal Backup was a natural addition to our cloud offering as we have become trusted suppliers to tens of thousands of users of mission critical hosted services such as hosted PBX, HD audio and video conferencing and call recording, said Dave Gilbert, CEO of SimpleSignal. Because of our growing knowledge and experience with helping companies implement disaster recovery programs within their communications technologies, it became evident there was a need for an easy to set up and use, cloud-based data backup solution.

SimpleSignal Backup provides secure, dependable online data backup and storage. Client data is stored in encrypted form using 256 bit AES encryption at two, Tier-4, SAS70 Type 2 certified, online data backup centers, located hundreds of miles apart from each other. (256-AES was approved by the United States National Security Agency (NSA) for use in encrypting the U.S. governments documents classified TOP SECRET). Each data center has 24/7 monitoring and advanced security measures such as biometric controlled access as well as backup generators and redundant connections to the Internet.

There are some major distinctions between our enterprise level backup service and the typical stand alone consumer backup products on the market, said Michael Sterl, VP, SimpleSignal. Their solutions are completely self-managed, while ours is a comprehensive service. Managed online data backup as a service means we help implement, set up, and constantly monitor a clients systems to make sure data is protected at all times. In the event of a disaster SimpleSignal Backup would have data restored within a matter of hours. With a consumer product, clients have to restore all the data on their own which can take days, weeks or months. Plus we can add contingency services like local backup to an installation, which no consumer product provides.

Some key features include:

Automatic – Backups begin automatically according to a user definable schedule.
Off-Site – All backups are sent to servers in secure off-site locations.
Custom Schedules – Backups can be scheduled to run as often as clients wish.
Scalable – No expense for new hardware when storage needs grow.
Unlimited Backup Sets – Create multiple backup sets each with their own schedule and retention setting.
Restore Files 24/7 – Recover a single file or entire system whenever needed.
Centralized Control – Manage multiple SimpleSignal Backup installations from one computer on the clients network.
Large File Support – Backup files of any size including multi-gigabyte files.
Works in the Background – Seamlessly backup files while they are open and in use.
Bandwidth Efficient – Only the blocks of data that have changed need to be uploaded to the SimpleSignal Backup servers.

For more information about SimpleSignal Backup, go to http://www.simplesignal.com/backup.php

About SimpleSignal

SimpleSignal is a hosted PBX and cloud-based Unified Communications service provider, delivering IP phone applications and cloud-based services to tens of thousands of satisfied business users throughout the US and Canada, with a growing list of multi-office clients in many International locations. In addition to its flagship cloud-based PBX phone offering, SimpleSignal provides a growing suite of unified communications solutions including mobile integration, integrated voice-powered applications and cloud services like backup and storage, audio and video conferencing, call recording, and desktop collaboration tools. SimpleSignal has created some of the most innovative and advanced voice mashups in the communications industry, leveraging voice technology for Facebook, LinkedIn, and Salesforce.com, among others. SimpleSignal has offices in Denver, CO, and Dana Point, CA. Find us on the web at http://www.simplesignal.com. For sales, call 866-434-4404. Read our blog: http://www.simplesignal.com/blog/.

Media Contact: Donna Sudderth, donna(at)simplesignal(dot)com, 949.777.5150

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Philadelphia-Area IBM

Malvern, PA (PRWEB) February 14, 2012

The Philadelphia-Area IBM

Philadelphia-Area IBM

A Unified Communications Solution with Hula Networks

Sunnyvale, CA (PRWEB) July 17, 2012

A leading, nationwide credit card servicing firm based in the Bay Area recently turned to Hula Networks to help bring a state of the art Unified communications system to fruition.

The bay area firm was growing rapidly and could no longer add personnel in their East Bay headquarters. The Credit card services firm had 85 employees working out of their current HQ and wanted to hire an additional 25 employees but had no space for the employees. The firm had a choice to make. They could find a bigger headquarters and pay substantial penalties by exiting their existing lease early or they could add satellite offices in strategic cities in the bay area that would enable the firm to grow and hire potential employees closer to where these potential hires lived.

To open remote offices in the targeted North Bay and south locales and hire candidates that lived near those offices the firm would need a major upgrade to their communications systems. The Firms first objective was to increase their communications feature set at the HQ and seamlessly tie in any new offices brought online so that the remote offices had access to the same and feature set and network performance as employees working out of

Headquarters.

The firms previous communications solution was to utilize a hosted voice over IP service that was managed remotely by a 3rd party company. While basic PBX features were working well the firm wanted to add in features like call recording, Voicemail to e-mail, fax server services, and mobile communications services for sales people and company executives. The customer also wanted to be able to manage their own network and PBX so they could make instant modifications such as updating auto attendant marketing messages on the fly. Their current provider took 24 hours to respond to basic feature request changes.

Hula Networks proposed a SIP based unified communications platform from Barracuda Networks that provided the firm with reliable, feature rich communications between all three sites. We also provided High definition SIP phones from Polycom, the market leader in IP phones. We were also able to add additional security for the firm utilizing Barracudas web filter technology and a complete disaster recovery solution utilizing Barracudas back up Service that offers affordable local data backups with several options for offsite data replication.

The firms secondary goal was to increase their internet bandwidth and decrease the recurring costs of both voice services and internet services. The firm had 2 Voice PRIs provisioned and serviced by the Hosted VOIP supplier for voice connectivity and a 6 megabit internet circuit provided by a second carrier for internet browsing.

Hula Networks provided a free audit of both the firms voice plan and their internet plan for both cost and functionality. We found that for hosted voice services, internet bandwidth and PBX equipment leases the firm was spending close to $ 14,000.00 per month.

Hula Networks proposal included an MPLS solution from a nationwide carrier that could deliver voice and data across the same circuits while tying in the firms headquarters and two satellite offices seamlessly. The MPLS network has allowed the firm to maintain their core services including PBX, File servers and ERP system at head quarters while delivering these same services to the satellite offices with no performance of feature degradation.

The net result was that Hula Networks and the carrier were able to provide a meshed MPLS network for all three sites providing voice and data services across the same platform. We were able to increase the firms internet bandwidth from 6 MB per second to 100 MB. In addition to providing these additional services and increase bandwidth we were able to save the firm $ 7500.00 per month in recurring telecom and data services costs. The total

annual savings will be $ 90,000.00 per year.

Best of all for our customer was the fact that the carrier was able to subsidize 100% of the hardware that Hula Networks provided for the Unified communications platform, the Web Filter hardware and the Back up Servers. The total cost to the customer for all the new hardware was Zero dollars out of pocket.

For More Information

http://www.hulanetworks.com

1-866-HULANET

About Hula Networks

Hula Networks, Inc. helps customers increase profits, decrease expenses, and mitigate risk for the past 10 years. Hula works hard to increase its client’s productivity and revenues by addressing the gaps in their current communication infrastructure and company procedures.

Hula Networks takes great pride in introducing the right technology to their clients while factoring their specific environmental needs and budgetary restraints into the equation. Hula focuses on designing, installing and supporting the network infrastructure that is best for its customers needs as opposed to what is best for our original equipment manufacturer partners.

Hulas goal is to deploy elegantly simple solutions that their customers can realistically maintain with their own in-house IT staff. Hula Networks has both the technical knowledge and resources to design, source, configure, implement, and support all of our clients IT needs.

A Unified Communications Solution with Hula Networks