VM6 Software Releases Virtual Machine ex Server 2.0

Virtualization company VM6 Software announced the release of Virtual Machine ex (VM6 VMex) Version 2.0 for remote office and branch locations. VMex leverages Microsoft Hyper-V to create an internal cloud to provision, consolidate, manage and protect all of the ROBO workloads. The company said the solution does not require any specialized skill sets other than Microsoft Certified System Engineers.

New features in Virtual Machine ex 2.0 include monitoring and alert capabilities that are fully integrated into the management console, so administrators can use the predefined templates or build their own to capture errors and write in log files, send e-mails or run a script; advanced security settings systems for administrators to assign delegation to allow users to have read, write or limited access to the various objects in the VMex cloud; and improved performance for virtual shared storage rebuild.

"Enterprise organizations that have realized the benefits of virtualization in the data center are struggling with ways to extend those same benefits to remote locations and branch offices as the costs are too high and the specialized skill sets required are unavailable or cost-prohibitive." said VM6 founder and CEO Claude Goudreault. "Enterprise leaders now seek solutions that make it easier to manage, provision, consolidate and protect the workloads across all of their locations. VM6 VMex addresses the challenges of virtualization adoption in remote office locations, providing an affordable and easy way to create a competitive advantage."

The VMex virtual SAN rebuild function automatically rebuilds a virtual SAN in less than 5 minutes without impacting the performance, the company said, even if the RAID was unavailable or down for up to a week. The solution also boasts reduced setup time with an improved install wizard accelerating the installation of VMex on a two-node cluster, now taking less than 15 minutes.

VM6 has also improved the network components layer. Removal of the dependency to PGM and the addition of VMex proprietary network drivers eliminated the stress on the Windows kernel, adding to performance and stability, the company claims. Rounding out the features is integrated quota management and thin provisioning, where VMex administrators can provision more storage than is physically available and set proper quota alerts to prevent over allocation of physical resources.

Christian Boivin, R D director at JLR Real Estate Data Builders, said the company has been using VM6 VMex 1.0 since it became available and is pleased to see this latest version, specifically for its integrated monitoring and alerting.

"As a search engine for real estate and property information, it's critical that our IT infrastructure be robust and available at all times, while being flexible as we're essentially transforming the mission of our servers between day and night," he said. "When we looked at available solutions in the market, they were all at least five times more expensive and required a lot of independently developed solutions to work together, which further added to the complexity.”