Rackable to Virtualize on VMware

Rackable Systems, which makes a number of high-density storage servers and other products for large data centers, announced it will run VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3 software suite to further its mission to consolidate and cluster the data center.

The Fremont, Calif., company announced that it would begin shipping its rack-mount x86 servers with VMwares VI3 software Sept. 6. In addition, Rackable will resell other VMware products and offer different levels of support for these various offerings.

VMware, Palo Alto, Calif., is gearing up for its VMworld conference next week and will now offer its full platform certification for Rackables x86 servers that use its software.

In a statement, Mark Barrenechea, president and CEO of Rackable, said the new agreement with VMware will help enterprises consolidate and streamline server density within massive data centers. The agreement will also help with power and cooling issues within large data centers by helping businesses consolidate workloads on fewer systems.

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“The VMware relationship enables Rackable Systems to extend our build-to-order model to support rack and data center-level virtualized environments,” Barrenechea said.

In August, Rackable launched a new set of high-performance clustered storage appliances that are designed to reduce power consumption and look to improve the performance per watt in complex computing environments.

Rackable is also looking to compete against Sun Microsystems Project Blackbox, a high-density, mobile data center, with its own mobile data center called Concentro. This mobile data center is a 40-foot by 8-foot mobile data center with the capacity to hold up to 1,200 of a companys rack-mount 1U (1.75-inch) servers.

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