Clearspace Server Syndication Feed

Virtualisation Just Do It: Strategies/Tools for Speedy P2V Migrations

2010-05-24T13:52:39Z

Vote for Strategies/Tools for Speedy P2V Migrations Here

http://vmworld.com/community/conferences/2010/cfpvote/tarchitecture

Session Id:TA8035 "Why do IT organisations continue to cling to physical servers to run their IT workloads when virtualising them instead could result in significant cost savings and easier management? They do this because the thought of migrating hundreds or thousands of servers can seem like a daunting and lengthy task, especially if the tricks and tips of IT administrators who have already done it successfully are unknown.

There are several approaches for converting physical servers to a virtual environment, both in terms of the tools available as well as the prevalent strategies on how to best plan for and execute large-scale migration efforts. The challenge in successfully converting an organisationís physical servers to virtual machines is both process-oriented and technical in nature.

In this session, attendees with be provided information on how to properly prepare for P2V conversions while remaining on-time and within budget. The session will also cover the most common mistakes that companies make when migrating their physical environment to the VMware Virtual Infrastructure platform. Additionally, it will provide an overview of what conversion technologies are available from VMware and third-party software companies for automating migrations and which scenarios these tools are most appropriate for.
"Type:Breakout SessionTrack:Technology and ArchitectureSpeaker Detail:Speaker: Scott Van Dyke Company: Double-Take Software

Vote for Strategies/Tools for Speedy P2V Migrations Here

http://vmworld.com/community/conferences/2010/cfpvote/tarchitecture

VMware extends vCloud with self-provisioning, APIs

2009-09-02T16:17:12Z

By Carl Brooks, Technology Writer

01 Sep 2009 | SearchCloudComputing.com

"VMware Inc.'s new vCloud Express cloud brokerage service, announced today, was designed to compete head-on in the public cloud market.

The service offers self-service provisioning of virtual machines (VMs) through the company's vCloud portal to hosting partners. Also at VMworld 2009, the company discussed the general release of its vCloud application programming interface (API), paralleling other public cloud providers like GoGrid, Rackspace and Amazon.

VMware is pitching the vCloud Express service as an inexpensive and efficient way for enterprises that already use VMware virtualization to start extending their deployments into the cloud, with a minimum of pain and suffering and the ability to choose among competing vendors offering VMware cloud services.

"When you hear vCloud Express, think fast and cheap, or fast and cost-effective, I should say," said VMware CEO Paul Maritz at his VMworld keynote speech, delivered from San Francisco. Maritz said that VMware is releasing its API for vCloud and would strive for broad functionality and acceptance by cloud users, saying the company would hew to as-yet-undetermined standards for cloud computing.

"The vCloud API has been submitted to standards organizations to get a common standard we can all rally behind," Maritz said. He did not specify which standards bodies those were, but it is likely that the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) will be involved. VMware is a long-time DTMF member."

To read the rest of the article, click here!

Double-Take Software and Compellent Host Joint Event!

2009-09-01T18:38:52Z

Double-Take® Software Announces New Version of Double-Take® Move with Full VMware vSphere? 4 Support

2009-09-01T15:59:52Z

Southborough, Mass. - September 1, 2009

*_News from VMworld 2009:_ *Double-Take® Software Announces New Version of Double-Take® Move with Full VMware vSphere^TM ^4 Support

Company Also Receives VMware Ready^TM ^Certification for Double-Take® Flex Storage Server

Key Facts

Double-Take Software(NASDAQ: DBTK) today announced two major virtualization developments: the release of Double-Take Move Version 5.2 and VMware Ready^TM certification for Double-Take Flex Storage Server.

These developments further solidify Double-Take Software‘s importance in the virtualization space by providing users with comprehensive P2P, P2V, V2P, and V2V migration capabilities as well as advanced storage and availability platforms upon which to architect their virtualized infrastructures.

About Double-Take Move Version 5.2

Double-Take Software's award-winning Double-Take Move 5.2 now comes with full VMware vSphere^TM 4 support, allowing it to seamlessly interface with the VMware platform.

These updates allow users to operate on the latest available releases of VMware products and have real-time, lightning-fast P2P, P2V, V2P, and V2V migrations with little to no downtime.

About VMware Ready^TM ^Certification for Double-Take Flex Storage Server

Double-Take Flex Storage Server is now VMware Ready^TM Certified, meaning it has completed the VMware Hardware Certification Program testing criteria for iSCSI storage when used with VMware vSphere^TM 4 and is now listed on the VMware Hardware Compatibility Guide.

VMware Ready^TM certification allows Double-Take Flex to work with VMware availability features such as VMware VMotion and VMware High Availability (HA) and opens the door to additional integrations with VMware products.

The VMware Hardware Certification Program enables VMware Technology Alliance Partner (TAP) program members to provide mutual customers with jointly supported hardware solutions. Passing the extensive certification testing helps ensure that Double-Take Flex Storage Server is compatible with the VMware platform and ready for deployment in customer environments.

Double-Take Flex Storage Server provides IT managers with the opportunity to use Double-Take Flex as a cost-effective and easy to administer iSCSI SAN with VMware vSphere^TM 4.

Quotes

Parag Patel, vice president, alliances, VMware: "Double-Take Software has met the stringent requirements to be VMware Ready^TM Certified, meaning customers can trust that these products will provide maximum benefit and compatibility in a virtualized environment. We work closely with partners like Double-Take Software to help customers transform their IT infrastructure into a reliable and flexible service. We're excited about this and other collaborative opportunities with Double-Take Software that will help accelerate the customer journey to 100 percent virtualization."

Mark Bowker, senior analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group: "Double-Take Software has put tremendous effort into its virtualization products, which has the potential to significantly help customers of all sizes. The new version of Double-Take Move and the VMware iSCSI Storage Hardware Certification allow Double-Take Software to continue its strong relationship with major virtualization vendors while providing robust solutions to its customers."

Gerard Gregory, vice president at Double-Take Software: "Double-Take Move 5.2 provides users with additional features that enable superior support and compatibility with the VMware platform. We are very excited to offer these enhancements as we continue to provide the highest level of migration and disaster recovery products to our customers."

Contacts:

Steve Harrington

Double-Take Software

508-229-8410

sharrington@doubletake.com

Ben Haber

Racepoint Group Inc.

781-487-4641

bhaber@racepointgroup.com

To read the full article, click here!

Check us out at VMworld!

2009-08-28T18:58:10Z

It's that time of year again and VMworld is fast approaching! Here at Double-Take Software, we are gearing up for all the great events VMworld has planned and are looking forward to seeing all of you.

Double-Take Software will be featured as one of the presenters at this conference. Our own, Bob Roudebush, director of solutions engineering, will be presenting on, "An Optimized Approach to Workload Availability in Virtualized Environments", on Wednesday, September 2nd at 3pm. Can't make the presentation? Don't worry, we'll be tweeting live! Follow us on Twitter.

For those of you who can't make it to the conference at all, we'll be blogging about the days hottest and most talked about topics and sessions! Check us out on our blog.

Want to learn more about how you can reduce your downtime and data loss in virtual systems? Double-Take Software has the solution for all your virtualization needs. Stop by our booth 2407 to learn more!

Also, check out our friends at Dell TechCenter, booth 1801, for the latest on Double-Take on Dell solutions!

We look forward to seeing all of you there!

Don't forget to follow us on Twitter for updates and check out our blog!

Does Your Brain Itch ? Let Us Pick It at VMworld

2009-08-27T13:39:01Z

05 August , 05:12 PM

"It's only a few weeks until VMworld. All of us in the Dell TechCenter, Jeff, Kong, and myself are getting excited as this is one of the best conferences of the year.

We have decked out the VMworld Dell Virtual Exhibitor booth in preparation for the trip. Be sure to stop by for the latest information on our offerings and potential booth give-a-ways.

If you can't make the show, keep up with us on Twitter.

If you can make the show, we'd love to meet up with you. We are evolving the Dell TechCenter and would love to hear from you what we can do to make it a valuable one-stop resource for virtualization, storage, power, systems management, and of course servers.

The plan is to pick your brains for an hour on Wednesday Sept 2nd from 4-5pm then get some refreshments and head on over to the VMworld party. We've got limited room, so respond quick. Send me an email (scott_hanson@dell.com) with your contact details and I'll get together a list and contact you with the exact details.

Don't worry, if we get more responses than we have room ... you are still invited for refreshments afterwards. Be sure to follow us on Twitter and I'll announce the location to meetup for the tweetup.

Looking forward to meeting up with you all !"

Double-Take Software will be nearby to help with all your Double-Take on Dell solutions! Stop by our booth 2407 for more information!

To read more, click here!

Double-Take® Software to Present at VMworld 2009 !

2009-08-26T14:35:20Z

Company's Director of Solutions Engineering Will Address Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery in Virtual and Physical Environments

Bob Roudebush, director of solutions engineering at Double-Take Software (NASDAQ: DBTK), will present at this year's VMworld 2009. One of the largest virtualization-focused events of the year, VMworld will take place from August 31st to September 2nd at The Moscone Center in San Francisco, California.

Virtualization has allowed new methods for protection and recovery of physical workloads, but has also introduced new challenges for protecting virtualized workloads. In his session, "An Optimized Approach to Workload Availability in Virtualized Environments," Roudebush will address the technical considerations for providing high availability and disaster recovery of physical servers using traditional protection solutions as well as newer solutions that combine aspects of real-time data replication and full-server recovery. He will also cover options for protecting virtualized workloads including leveraging technologies like VMware® VMotion, SAN-based replication solutions and software-based replication and availability products.

Presentation Details

Where: VMworld 2009

Who: Bob Roudebush, director of solutions engineering, Double-Take Software

Session: "An Optimized Approach to Workload Availability in Virtualized Environments"

Date: Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Time: 3:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.

Location: The Moscone Center, 747 Howard Street, San Francisco, CA

For more information on VMworld 2009, visit http://www.vmworld2009.com/. For more information on Double-Take Software, visit http://www.doubletake.com/ or stop by booth 2407!

vSphere and Double-Take Software; Optimize While you Virtualize

2009-06-02T14:47:49Z

vSphere and Double-Take Software; Optimize While you Virtualize

Organizations of all sizes recognize the value of virtualization; among the benefits are easy management, less infrastructure, and operational cost savings. However, virtualization can pose it's own set of problems - for example, getting physical workloads migrated to the virtual framework fast enough without disrupting daily operations, keeping them highly available in case of a disaster and backed up in a way that makes recovery simple and fast. Now there is a joint solution that combines the cost savings of virtualization with comprehensive, non-disruptive migration, backup and recovery.

Speakers Bob Roudebush, Double-Take Software Director of Solution Engineering, and Paul Vasquez, VMware Senior Technical Alliance Manager, discuss how you can maximize your VMware vSphere deployments and optimize your workloads to meet your business needs. Topics discussed include:

VMware vSphere Features
Deploying vSphere Clouds
Zero downtime migrations and conversions
Granular workload availability and disaster recovery
Workload backup and easy recovery

Date: June 17, 2009

**Time: 11am - 12pm ET / 4pm - 5pm London Time / 5pm - 6pm Paris Time

Participe al próximo webinar de VMware® y Double-Take® Software titulado ¿Cómo proteger de manera eficaz y a bajo coste une entorno vSphere con Double-Take Software?

Fecha: Miércoles 17 de junio

Hora: 17h00

Enlace de inscripción: http://tinyurl.com/prsm4z

Aggiungiti a VMware® e Double-Take® Software per un webinar informativo su come massimizzare il deployment del tuo vSphere e i tuoi workload soddisfando al meglio le diverse necessita’ del tuo business.

Ora: 17h00 Roma

Giorno: Mercoledi’ 17 Giugno

Registrazione: http://tinyurl.com/prsm4z

Voor verdere info, neem deel aan het Webinar van Double-Take en VMware met als onderwerp: Hoe op een efficiente en betaalbare wijze een vSphere 4 met Double Take software beschermen

Datum : woensdag 17 juni 2009

Tijdstip : 17 uur

Registratie: http://tinyurl.com/prsm4z

Registrieren Sie sich noch heute für das gemeinsame VMware und Double-Take Webinar zum Thema, “Wie schütze ich effizient und kostengünstig eine vSpere4 Umgebung mit Double-Take”

Uhrzeit : 17 Uhr

Datum: Mittwoch, 17. Juni 2009

Registrieren Sie sich hier: http://tinyurl.com/prsm4z

Double-Take® Software Presents at VMware Shanghai Event

2009-05-27T17:41:09Z

新模式促进基于VMware vSphere^TM 4灾难恢复解决方案的部署

http://sh.cbinews.com/news/160065.html

Double-Take pictures from the VMware Shanghai Event

Maximize Your Strategy for Migration, Virtualization, Availability, and Desktop

2009-05-20T17:19:22Z

Double-Take® Software, Gartner Research and Chickasaw Nation Launch Video Webinar on Workload Optimization Best Practices

Southborough, Mass. - May 20, 2009 -- Double-Take® Software (NASDAQ: DBTK) today

announced the availability of a video webinar focused on how a Workload Optimization strategy

can impact a company's bottom line. Produced in partnership with Gartner Research, the video webinar, titled, "Maximize Your Strategy for Migration, Virtualization, Availability, and DesktopManagement," is ready for immediate viewing at http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/vmworld/0/50447458/

Featuring Gartner Research vice president Dave Russell, and Bob Roudebush, director of solutions engineering at Double-Take Software, the video webinar takes an in-depth look at the upcoming IT trends and challenges that will have the biggest impact on Workload Optimization and how IT organizations can achieve the highest level of availability without investing in complex hardware schemes, software and support services. Viewers will also hear from Rob Jacks, chief information officer at Chickasaw Nation, on why his IT organization turned to Double-Take Software to manage the migration, backup, availability and provisioning of their critical workloads.

Video Webinar Details

What: Maximize Your Strategy for Migration, Virtualization, Availability, and Desktop

Management

When: On-demand, beginning Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Where: http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/vmworld/0/50447458/

Double-Take® Software Announces New Pricing and Licensing Model for Double-Take® for Virtual Systems

2009-05-05T14:08:22Z

New Model* *Allows for Easy Deployment of Disaster Recovery Solutions

Based on the VMware vSphereTM

Double-Take® Software (NASDAQ: DBTK) today announced a new pricing and licensing model for for Virtual Systemsthat enables customers to simply and cost-effectively protect an unlimited number of virtual machines under one license. The new model makes it easy for customers to deploy disaster recovery solutions based on VMware vSphere[TM|http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere/] by licensing at the hypervisor level, versus the guest virtual machine level, ultimately enabling customers to reap the rewards of server virtualization while delivering a recovery framework that keeps workloads available at all times.

**"The new licensing model for Double-Take for Virtual Systems allows customers of all sizes to cost-effectively protect virtual machines within their VMware environments, further streamlining virtualization for customers as they move toward cloud computing," said Parag Patel, vice president, alliances, VMware. "With this simplified virtual machine licensing model, joint customers can even more easily adopt the VMware platform, helping them build internal clouds in an evolutionary, non-disruptive way to increase control and efficiency while preserving customer choice."

**The new licensing model aligns Double-Take for Virtual Systems with the deployment of VMware virtualization and no longer forces end-users to track and count individual workloads. More importantly, the licensing model offers a user-friendly and competitive price/performance structure at a time when IT budgets are under increased pressure.

**"With this new model, Double-Take Software is once again demonstrating its commitment to being a true customer champion at a time when IT organizations are under tremendous pressure to streamline costs and workloads, " said Chris Pyle, CEO, of Champion Solutions Group. "This new pricing and licensing will enable IT managers to reap the rewards of virtualization through more flexibility and control over their workloads - all under one simple licensing model. "

**"With businesses under increasing pressure to lower costs, virtualization is evolving into more than just a technology of convenience. Virtualization is an effective strategy for reducing IT administration costs," said Dan Jones, vice president of North American sales and marketing at Double-Take Software. "Companies of all sizes can benefit technologically and operationally from a highly available virtualized platform, and Double-Take for Virtual Systems offers heterogeneous storage, granular machine failover, great failback process, and critical application support."

**Double-Take for Virtual Systems provides complete data protection and disaster recovery for virtual machines. It offers full operational support for VMware vSphere 4. Additionally, all other Double-Take Software products support the VMware vSphere 4 release.

Double-Take® Software Presents Workload Optimization at VMware® Partner Exchange

2009-04-13T18:20:07Z

Double-Take Software is gearing up for the VMware Partner Exchange in Orlando, FL and the Double-Take team will be twittering the #PE09 activities from Booth #5 all week. Last week Double-Take announced A New Workload Optimization Suite Offering that included the ability for IT managers to easily migrate, backup, protect and flexibly run physical and virtual IT workloads and will be discussing how workload optimization will help the acceleration and adoption of VMware virtual machines for disaster recovery. Part of the workload optimization suite announced included Double-Take Move, which provides the ability to perform X2X migration capabilities while systems remain online. This will certainly be a topic of discussion to help VMware customers easily adopt VMware Virtual Infrastructure with little to no downtime. As IT managers look to reduce costs and ease operational management tasks they continue to look for the best way to virtualize existing infrastructure without impacting existing production operations.

Migration

Move workloads between any combination of platforms (P2P, P2V, V2P or V2V)
Migrate within datacenters or across locations for datacenter migrations and consolidations

Backup

Continuously backup workloads with real-time, WAN-friendly protection
Automated recovery from any point in time to an ESX virtual machine

Availability

Real-time byte-level replication (over any distance) of workloads running on VMware ESX
Automated monitoring/failover of virtualized workloads to protect workload uptime

Managing Virtual Workloads can be a complicated and inflexible proposition. Double-Take software can help accelerate the adoption of VMware virtual machines for disaster recovery by providing an efficient, scalable way to move to virtual machine workloads into an offsite managed Disaster recovery location with zero downtime.

Double-Take Software Workload Optimization Suite

2009-04-06T15:39:49Z

Scott Lowe scooped the latest Double-Take Software announcement today and put together a nice outline how the four category of products, Move, Flex, Availability and Backup make up of the workload optimization suite. Here is a sample of the article and the rest can be read here.

"Double-Take Software's Workload Optimization Suite"

Monday, April 6, 2009 in Microsoft, Virtualization by slowe | No comments

Today Double-Take Software announces their new Workload Optimization Suite. All of Double-Take's flagship software products are now organized and unified within the idea of workload optimization, and new products are being announced to help provide a more complete set of solutions.

The products in the Workload Optimization Suite include:

Double-Take Move
Double-Take Flex
Double-Take Backup
Double-Take Availability

Of these four products, two of them-Move and Flex-are new products also being announced today. These new products are available today. Double-Take Backup and Double-Take Availability are available under existing Double-Take, Livewire, TimeData, and GeoCluster brands. For example, Double-Take for Windows will fold into the Double-Take Availability and Double-Take Backup products later this year with an update.

Double-Take Move is one of the new products that was announced today. Double-Take Move leverages Double-Take's existing replication technologies to provide a platform-independent X2X migration engine. X2X means any-to-any: physical-to-virtual (P2V), physical-to-physical (P2P), virtual-to-physical (V2P), and virtual-to-virtual (V2V) are all supported. In addition, Double-Take Move will automatically create a VMware ESX or Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machine when the destination is a virtual machine. Pricing is available per-use or for an entire site. Personally, I've never been a fan of tools that are licensed on a per-use basis, but with a product like this there are only so many ways to license it. For larger projects, I hope Double-Take's site licensing won't be too unattractive.

An Optimized Approach to Workload Availability in Virtualized Environments

2009-02-06T16:51:38Z

VMworld Europe Session

Wednesday 25th February

11.00AM

Room: Redaction 1

Speaker: Bob Roudebush of Double-Take Software

Virtualisation enables multiple IT workloads to run on a single physical machine as virtual machines (VMs). Fewer physical machines can lead to reduced costs through lower hardware, energy, and management overhead, plus the creation of a more dynamic IT infrastructure. However, not every application can or will be virtualised and the adoption of virtualisation will bring with it a rise in the number of mixed physical and virtual environments. As a result, organizations of all sizes will struggle with the challenge of recovering and optimizing critical workloads in this more diverse IT landscape. While virtualisation has enabled new methods for predictable protection and recovery of physical workloads, at the same time it introduces new challenges for protecting virtualized workloads.

In this session, Bob Roudebush of Double-Take Software will address the technical considerations for providing high availability and disaster recovery of physical servers using traditional protection solutions as well as newer solutions that combine aspects of real-time data replication and full-server recovery. In addition, the session will cover options for protecting virtualized workloads including leveraging technologies like VMotion, SAN-based replication solutions and software-based replication and availability products.

Bob will go through the following topics:

How can virtualization be leveraged as a means to enable more effective protection and recovery of physical servers?
What technologies are available for protecting virtualized workloads and what are their strengths and weaknesses?
Which availability solutions are most appropriate for both planned and unplanned downtime?
Which kinds of physical and virtual protection use cases are most beneficial for my company to investigate?

An Optimized Approach to Workload Backup

2009-02-04T14:12:04Z

Date: February 11, 2009

Time: 11am - 12pm ET / 4pm - 5pm London Time / 5pm - 6pm Paris Time

Backing up and recovering IT workloads with existing technologies like periodic tape-based or disk-based backup is expensive and complex. In 2009, effectively utilize your backup budget by employing an alternative solution that is better and cheaper than tape backup - with more functionality.

Double-Take Software provides an alternative to a tape-only approach to backup and recovery as part of its Workload Optimization Software suite. Products like Livewire and TimeData provide a better way of doing backups while reducing expenses usually associated with backup software agents, tape hardware, tape media and off-site storage. More importantly, these products make it much easier to recover quickly - whether it's an individual e-mail or an entire server.

In this educational webinar, we will review the challenges most organizations face today with existing backup and recovery solutions. You'll hear a technical overview of Double-Take Software's products and how they can be used to replace a tape-only approach and improve your overall backup and disaster recovery plan for virtual infrastructure.