eWEEK content and product recommendations are editorially independent. We may make money when you click on links to our partners. Learn More.
Unisys is rolling out two additional infrastructure offerings as part of its Real Time Infrastructure product line, and the two products are designed to help with both virtualization and automation within a data center.
As with several previous products the Blue Bell, Pa., company started selling in 2005, these two new tools look to help enterprises get the most efficiency out of the data center.
With the size and scope of data centers increasing and taking a larger chunk of an enterprises budget, these two tools were designed to maximize savings potential associated with virtualization and automation, said Alan Bender, vice president and general manager of RTI (Real-Time Infrastructure) at Unisys.
“These issues out there today are power, cooling and real estate, and we think that these solutions will help in addressing those issues,” Bender said.
On Jan. 22, Unisys is unveiling its Enterprise Virtualization product that will work with virtualization software, such as that from VMware and Virtual Iron, as well as the open-source Xen hypervisor, and with the companys ES7000/one servers. This system supports both Intels Xeon and Itanium processors.
The product will allow IT administrators to find those critical infrastructure components within a data center, target equipment that is ripe for virtualization based on utilization data and automate the physical-to-virtual process within a ES7000/one server.
The Enterprise Virtualization tool uses two new pieces of technology from Unisys. The first, called Real-Time Consolidation Accelerator, provides for the automated conversion of applications and operating systems between the physical servers, the virtual machines and the image archives.
This feature will allow the IT department to look at the current situation in the data center and also offer a module of how the center will look after virtualization and consolidation is complete, Bender said. It also allows for the movement of application from a physical server to a virtual machine as well as from a virtual machine to another virtual machine.
In addition, if the application does not perform on a virtual machine, the accelerator tool also allows for the application to be shifted back to the physical server.
The second technology, Real-Time Chargeback, gives IT managers a window into where the resources are being used in a heterogeneous data center environment, including those resources used in both virtualized and non-virtualized machines.
In addition to its virtualization offering, Unisys is offering a product dubbed Enterprise Orchestration. This tool allows administrators to set polices within the data center for resource usage and performance. The software then can automatically move workloads from one machine to another or use an underutilized server to help balance out a workload.
By automating this process, Unisys claims it can help reduce data center costs.
Unisys RTI plan is part of an umbrella program called 3D Visible Enterprise. This strategy looks to give Unisys customers a better and more holistic look at the data center and show the effect business demands have on the IT infrastructure.
“Its all about connecting IT to business, and changes in that relationship change a companys infrastructure,” Bender said.
Other IT vendors, such as Hewlett-Packard with its Adaptive Enterprise and IBM with its on-demand initiative, have also tried to use the holistic approach to tackle issues within the data center.