Greatresponder.com – 2010-07-29 – Managing open source hypervisors, including Xen and KVM, became a lot easier today with the release of ConVirt 2.0 Enterprise edition from Convirture Corp.

The open source version of ConVirt has been available for more than three years and is broadly deployed and well-tested in real-world data centers — having been downloaded more than 30,000 times. In fact, ConVirt1.x is included in most major Linux distributions such as Ubuntu, Open SUSE, Debian and others.

ConVirt 2.0 Enterprise extends ConVirt Open Source with the advanced automation and scalability features necessary for running large-scale or mission-critical virtualized environments. By delivering high availability, backup and recovery, storage and network automation, and enterprise-grade security, ConVirt 2.0 Enterprise enables IT managers to meet and exceed service levels while using infrastructure in the most efficient way.

ConVirt 2.0 Enterprise is also the go-to tool for enterprises ready to move beyond virtualized infrastructure management towards a hosted or private cloud model. With an extensive cloud management feature set, which includes multi-tenant security, delegated control, scheduled provisioning, resource limiting, and many more, ConVirt 2.0 Enterprise enables IT organizations to offer infrastructure-as-a-service, while ensuring full isolation and compliance with corporate policies.

“We’ve implemented a variety of virtualization platforms over the years and managing them all – especially the open source hypervisors – has always been the single biggest pain point,” said Steven Scoleri, Principal Architect at GSI Commerce, a leading provider of e-commerce and interactive marketing services. “Our beta test of ConVirt 2.0 Enterprise has gone very well and we think it just may be the game-changer we’ve been looking for. We no longer need experts on hand at all times to complete simple virtualization tasks. We look forward to further exploring ConVirt’s capabilities and using it to manage our entire open source-based virtual data center.”

“Until now, any organization that wanted a complete solution for managing and automating a virtual data center was locked into expensive and proprietary solutions like VMware vCenter,”,” said Arsalan Farooq, CEO of Convirture. “That changes today as ConVirt 2.0′s advanced automation, private cloud management, enterprise scalability and datacenter integration features now meet or exceed what’s available from proprietary platform vendors. With ConVirt 2.0 Enterprise, organizations considering Xen or KVM as open source alternatives to commercial virtualization platforms are no longer forced to compromise on manageability. ”

About ConVirt 2.0 Enterprise

ConVirt 2.0 Enterprise supports all of the features available with the ConVirt 2.0 Open Source product including:

• Server pool-based management
• Templates-based provisioning
• Monitoring and configuration management
• Comprehensive virtual machine administration
• Highly scalable, 3-tier, standards-based architecture

In addition, ConVirt 2.0 Enterprise delivers scalability, automation, and private cloud management features that were previously available only for proprietary virtualization platforms, including:

• High availability: ConVirt 2.0 Enterprise ensures that mission-critical applications are always up and running by delivering a comprehensive high availability feature set, including virtual and physical machine failover;
• Backup and recovery: A full backup and recovery feature set ensures successful recovery from planned and unplanned outages. Scheduled and on-demand backups are supported. Restore modes can be for the most recent state or any earlier backup. Both virtual machine state and storage are captured, so virtual machines are brought up in a consistent state.
• Private Cloud Management: A data center that has been virtualized can be turned into a private, infrastructure-as-a-service cloud in a scalable and secure way, with support for full multi-tenant security, delegated control, scheduled provisioning, resource limiting and the ability to create virtual appliances that comply with corporate standards and publish them effortlessly to cloud users.
• Storage and network automation with ConVirt 2.0 Enterprise significantly streamlines the error-prone and time-consuming tasks of configuring network and storage in a virtualized environment. Storage configuration standardizes storage across a server pool by automating configuration of all storage types, including NFS, iSCSi, AOE, Fiber Channel and LVM. Network integration provides a centralized interface for managing virtual networks.
• Enterprise Integration: ConVirt 2.0 Enterprise provides a full suite of integration capabilities, including an open repository, command line interface, and programmatic APIs.

Pricing and Availability

ConVirt 2.0 Enterprise is available immediately direct from Convirture. Pricing starts at $1,495 per host for up to 10 hosts, with volume pricing available for larger environments. A “per virtual machine” pricing package is also available for ISP’s and hosting providers. More information is available at http://www.convirture.com/contact.html

About Convirture

Convirture was founded in 2006 to help organizations effectively manage open source virtualization platforms. More information is available at www.convirture.com.

VEXXHOST has announced in an email that was sent to its clients that it has started offering near CDP protection to all of its shared & reseller web hosting accounts.  They are using a backup system powered by R1soft’s near CDP technology which allowed them to have backups of all of the shared/reseller web hosting accounts.  This new feature comes in with no increased fees and a promise from vexxhost to never raise its prices.

At the moment, their clients data is protected and backed up every 3 hours, which means everyday at 12AM, 3AM, 6AM, 9AM, 12PM, 3PM, 6PM, 9PM.  Also, they can restore a backup up to 24 hours ago which means that if they need to restore a backup at 12AM, they have 8 backups taken at a span of 3 hours for the whole day, so instead of losing a whole day’s work, they would only can lose 3 hours maximum.  VEXXHOST has also mentioned that they take daily backups for all accounts.

This backup service is the best and only in class, no other shared & reseller web hosting provider is yet able to provide a backup service every 3 hours. They also backup the MySQL databases in a way where they are temporarily locked and there is no possibility of the database becoming corrupt or the backup itself, this maximizes security and decreases any possibility of a corrupted backup.

VEXXHOST, a web hosting provider that has been constantly advancing and evolving with technology still continues to have one of the best web hosting offers.  With their shared web hosting plans starting at $2.55 per month, they continue to be one of the best budget providers with a premium offering because of their redundant systems, networks and services.