Citrix

IBM is getting in the cloud. After a string of announcements over the past few weeks from Citrix, Red Hat, VMware, Cisco and Hewlett-Packard, Big Blue is launching an initiative to extend its traditional software delivery model toward a mix of on-premise and cloud-computing applications with new software, services and technical resources for clients and independent software vendors (ISVs).

Hi everyone,

VMware this week announced a string of new products with a single goal in mind: to expand its flagship virtual-infrastructure suite into a Virtual Datacenter Operating System (VDC-OS).

VDC-OS aims to help businesses pool hardware resources -- servers, storage and network -- into an aggregated on-premises cloud, and to move workloads to external clouds for additional computing capacity when needed.

Citrix Systems has rolled out XenServer 5 -- a next-generation server platform that promises to reduce the complexity of virtualization deployments. To keep things simple, XenServer 5 integrates new configuration wizards and intuitive interfaces, together with point-and-click conversion of physical servers into virtual machines.

Routers, switches, servers ... the nuts and bolts of every data center -- regardless of architecture complexity -- it all begins here. [Here are some] infrastructure solutions from several of the key players.

High-Availability Server

The Fujitsu PRIMEQUEST 580 server offers mission-critical capability for hosting Microsoft Windows Server (Enterprise Edition and Data Center Edition), Red Hat Advanced Server or Novell SUSE Enterprise Linux 64-bit operations, and incorporates numerous redundant and hot-plug components for system availability.

To spur the adoption of virtualization, VMware is offering its stand-alone ESXi hypervisor for free. ESXi was built to run virtual machines, minimizing configuration requirements and simplifying deployment, according to the company.

Leading server manufacturers have all embedded ESXi, including Dell, Fujitsu-Siemens, Hitachi, HP, IBM and NEC.

Dell on Wednesday launched two dedicated virtualization servers, the PowerEdge R805 and R905. The PowerEdge R805 offers twice the memory and input/output capacity of Dell's previous generation of two-socket servers. The Dell PowerEdge R900 and R905 can deliver four-socket virtualization.

Dell is offering a choice of VMware ESXi 3.5 or Citrix XenServer Dell Express Edition integrated hypervisors. With either option, Dell said the PowerEdge R805 and R905 are optimal for virtualized environments.