Lanamark announced a partnership with Oracle that will enable Oracle channel partners to leverage Lanamark Suite to design and deliver desktop and server virtualization solutions based on Oracle VM. Lanamark will be presenting at upcoming Oracle VM boot camps and created a calculator for comparing Oracle VM vs. VMware vSphere.

Lanamark Suite enables Oracle partners to accelerate design and delivery of Oracle VM virtualization solutions. Solution providers can gather vital information about x86/x64 and SPARC environments, identify most suitable candidates for virtualization, and then design complete, high-performance virtualization solutions with Oracle VM. Lanamark Suite supports application, middleware, database, operating system, server, storage and thin client components from Oracle and Oracle alliance partners.

Learn more about the partnership between Lanamark and Oracle. 

Today Lanamark announced availability of Lanamark Suite Managed Services Edition which enables IT consultants, managed service providers, system integrators and value-added resellers to offer subscription-based capacity management and optimization services. Here is a summary of the two editions:

Professional Services Edition

Lanamark Suite Professional Services Edition enables solution providers to deliver project-based assessment, planning and design services across desktops, servers and storage. It facilitates delivery of the following solutions and services:

• Application Delivery Planning
• Desktop Virtualization Planning
• Server Virtualization Planning
• Storage Optimization

Managed Services Edition

Lanamark Suite Managed Services Edition enables solution providers to deliver subscription-based capacity management and optimization services across physical and virtual infrastructure. It facilitates delivery of the following solutions and services:

• Capacity Management
• Hardware Lifecycle Management
• Continuous Server Consolidation
• Virtual Infrastructure Optimization
• Software Asset Management

Rather than resell complex capacity planning software such as Novell PlateSpin Recon, solution providers can instead deliver capacity planning and optimization as a service. This allows customers to focus on their core business rather than purchase expensive software and maintain in-house expertise for using it.

Lanamark today announced a partnership with First Distribution, IBM's largest distributor in Africa. First Distribution is a true value-added distributor with a focus on data centre and virtulization solutions. The partnership will enable VARs, system integrators and consultants working with First Distribution to use Lanamark Suite to design and deliver desktop virtualization, server virtualization and storage solutions to enterprises in South Africa.

Our partnership further validates our value proposition to the IT channel around design and delivery of application virtualization, desktop virtualization, server virtualization and storage solutions. To excel in the highly competitive virtualization services marketplace, solution providers need to be armed with the best sales and service delivery tools and to provide customers with cross-vendor solutions. Lanamark Suite enables our partners set themselves apart and deliver highly optimized, enterprise-class virtualization solutions across leading virtualization platforms.

Learn more

Visit First Distribution Portal

On March 30, 2009 Citrix opened the floodgates and started offering Citrix XenServer Enterprise for free. However to get some of the enterprise features such as High Availability it is necessary to purchase Citrix Essentials for XenServer. Here is a comparison of enterprise virtualization offerings from Citrix and VMware:

• Citrix XenServer Enterprise with Citrix Essentials for XenServer Enterprise Edition: $2,750 per server with one year Subscription Advantage.
• VMware vSphere Enterprise: $2,875 per CPU (up to 6 cores) + VMware vCenter Server Standard: $4,995.

Price Comparison

• N two-way servers (N > 3): $4,995 + N x $3,000
• Citrix XenServer Enterprise with Citrix Essentials for XenServer Enterprise Edition: $2,750 x N
• Citrix XenCenter: $0
• VMware vSphere Enterprise: $5,750 x N
• VMware vCenter Server Standard: $4,995

• N four-way servers (N > 3): $4,995 + N x $8,750
• Citrix XenServer Enterprise with Citrix Essentials for XenServer Enterprise Edition: $2750 x N
• Citrix XenCenter: $0
• VMware vSphere Enterprise: $11,500 x N
• VMware vCenter Server Standard: $4,995

  Examples

• 5 two-way servers: $4,995 + 5 x $3,000 = $19,995 savings with Citrix XenServer
• 5 four-way servers: $4,995 + 5 x $8,750 = $48,745 savings with Citrix XenServer
• 10 two-way servers: $4,995 + 10 x $3,000 = $34,995 savings with Citrix XenServer
• 10 four-way servers: $4,995 + 10 x $8,750 = $92,495 savings with Citrix XenServer

To take full advantage of VMware vSphere Enterprise six-core licensing limit, it may be worthwhile to consider the following servers with six-core AMD and Intel processors to maximize VM density:

• HP ProLiant BL465c G6, BL495c G6, BL685C G6
• HP ProLiant DL385 G6, DL585 G6, DL785 G6
• IBM BladeCenter LS22, LS42
• IBM System x3755
• Sun Blade X6240, X6440
• Sun Fire X4140, X4240, X4440

• HP ProLiant BL680c G5
• HP ProLiant DL580 G5
• IBM System x3850 M2, x3950 M2
• Sun Blade X6450
• Sun Fire X4450

Of course software licensing costs are only a component of the total cost of ownership and a number of other factors such as performance and management applications available must be considered when choosing a virtualization platform. This is exactly what solution providers using Lanamark Suite try to accomplish when presenting enterprise customers with side-by-side comparisons across end-to-end virtualization solutions that encompass hardware, software and service components.

On November 10, 2009 Lanamark announced Lanamark Suite 2009 R2. The new release dramatically extends scalability to 50,000 systems and adds support for the latest OS and virtualization platforms, including: Citrix XenServer 5.5, Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V, Microsoft Windows 7, VMware vSphere 4.0 and VMware vCenter. Lanamark also introduces aggressive pricing for virtual machines and enhances the Lanamark Storage Design Module to provide deep insight into current and historical usage of local and networked storage resources.

The new release is a culmination of more than nine months of close collaboration with our alliance and channel partners. Many thanks to everyone who helped us push the envelope of innovation and deliver a world-class product.

Read the official press release

Learn more about what's new in Lanamark Suite 2009 R2

As speculation looms around plans from Citrix to release Citrix XenServer as open source, it's worthwhile to analyze how such a move would impact other leading software vendors in the virtualization space.

On February 23, 2009 Citrix announced that it will give away the full version of Citrix XenServer for free. Since Citrix is not generating any revenue from XenServer, open sourcing it seems like a logical step. But how will such a move impact the marketplace? Why would Citrix spend $500M on XenSource and then make Citrix XenServer open source?

As a Microsoft partner, Citrix understands that it's better to cooperate than to compete with the software giant, particularly in the server virtualization space. By open-sourcing Citrix XenServer, Citrix would:

1. Expand Citrix XenServer market share and drive additional revenue through virtualization management software such as Citrix Essentials.
2. Offer enterprises an open-source alternative to Microsoft Hyper-V with feature parity and high degree of interoperability.
3. Increase community-based support for development and maintenance of Citrix XenServer, rather than funding R&D completely.
4. Enhance adoption and survivability of Citrix XenServer by getting other software vendors such as Novell and Oracle to support it.

Microsoft

Microsoft benefits the most from this move because there would be an open-source server virtualization alternative that would isolate two other Linux-based virtualization platform vendors: Red Hat and VMware. In other words, Microsoft is squeezing these vendors from one side with Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V and from the other side with the help of Citrix XenServer.

Novell

As a company that already has good relationships with both Citrix and Microsoft, Novell has an opportunity to provide virtualization management capabilities across these two platforms. It already does this with the PlateSpin family of products. Novell may also do a port of Citrix XenServer to Novell SUSE but this is probably not a trivial effort and would take quite a bit of time.

Oracle

Oracle VM is already based on the Xen hypervisor. Whether Oracle decides to adopt Citrix XenServer depends on whether Oracle wants to give away its intellectual property to the open source community or to build dominance in the server virtualization space on its own. However, given its active participation in the Xen community, support for open source development model and antagonism towards Red Hat, Oracle may just throw its weight behind an open source Citrix XenServer.

In a nutshell Citrix, Microsoft, Novell and Oracle have a lot to gain from an open source Citrix XenServer, while Red Hat and VMware have a lot to lose from such a move. Perhaps Citrix will also rename Citrix XenServer back to XenSource Server?!

Update (November 2, 2009)

According to an interview with Simon Crosby, CTO at Citrix, XenServer will be open-sourced but the following components will not be:

• Citrix XenCenter
• Citrix XenConvert
• Drivers for Microsoft Windows

Oracle today announced availability of Oracle VM 2.2 as well as Oracle VM Storage Connect Program that will simplify management of storage infrastructure supporting virtual environments. The new release includes the following key features:

• Support for Xen 3.4 (latest Xen hypervisor)
• Support for migrating Virtual Iron VMs to Oracle VM images
• CPU power management, memory management, and direct disk I/O capabilities
• Support for the Oracle Cluster File System (OCFS2) 1.4 to enable faster VM provisioning and cloning
• Direct support for multipath storage devices that can enhance performance of clustered applications
• Options to set the scheduling priority for virtual CPUs in VMs and cap the maximum percentage of CPU time each individual VM can access
• Support for Intel Xeon 5500 series and six-core AMD Opteron processors

While Oracle may be coming late to the server virtualization party, it is clearly adding key enterprise features that are reducing the lead of its competitors. Furthermore, with Sun Microsystems, Oracle can offer what no other virtualization vendor can - a complete virtualization stack with all the key software and hardware components. And the complete stack can be easily designed and presented by Oracle partners using Lanamark Suite.

Today, Lanamark had the pleasure of exhibiting at interAct Partner Day and meeting with a number of channel partners delivering virtualization solutions. Mark Angelo, CEO of Lanamark, shared the stage with Rudi Lenaerts, CEO of interAct, who delivered the keynote in the afternoon. Mark Angelo also participated in the CEO roundtable and was interviewed by the IT Reseller magazine.

The event was very well organized and executed by a stellar interAct team. Other exhibitors at the event included AppSense, Citrix, DataCore, Endeavors Technologies, IGEL, RES Software and ScriptLogic. During his keynote, Scott Herren, Group Vice President and General Manager, Virtualization Systems at Citrix Systems announced XenDesktop 4.0.

Many thanks to everyone at interAct who worked tirelessly to put together the event and to all channel partners who took the time to participate.

Mark Angelo sharing the keynote with Rudi Lenaerts

Mark Angelo getting serious at the CEO Roundtable

Lanamark today announced a partnership with Avnet Technology Solutions, a leading distributor of enterprise computing products, software and services with locations in more than 30 countries. The partnership will enable value-added resellers, system integrators and system builders working with Avnet Technology Solutions to use Lanamark Suite to accelerate design and delivery of desktop virtualisation, server virtualisation and storage solutions to enterprises in EMEA.

The partnership between Avnet Technology Solutions and Lanamark allows IT solution providers to offer real options to customers across virtualization and hardware platforms, rather than limiting them to a fixed combination. Now VARs, system integrators and consultants can mix-and-match:

• Software from vendors such as Citrix, Microsoft, Oracle, Parallels, Quest and VMware
• Hardware from vendors such as EMC, HP, Hitachi, IBM, Fujitsu, IGEL, NetApp, Sun and Wyse

By doing so, solution providers can build solutions that are best for their customers and then purchase all the key components of these solutions from Avnet, all while shortening sales cycles and maintaining control of sales and services opportunities.

Lanamark will showcase Lanamark Suite at interAct Partner Day 2009 in Vilvoodre, Belgium on October 6, 2009. The event will be hosted by its distribution partner interAct, which specializes in data center and virtualization solutions.

If you are a current or a prospective partner in Belgium or Luxembourg, please visit us during the event. To set up a one-on-one session with a Lanamark executive or to learn more about partnering with interAct and Lanamark, please register.

Other exhibitors will include AppSense, Citrix, DataCore, Endeavors Technologies, RES Software, i365, IGEL, ScriptLogic and ThinPrint.