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.

The patent-pending HP Flexible Data Center (HP Flexible DC) offers a standardized, modular approach to designing and building data centers that allows clients to replace traditional data center designs with a flexible solution that can be expanded as needed while conserving resources.

“The pressure to save on capital and operating expenditures is one of the most critical issues facing enterprises today,” said David J. Cappuccio, vice president and chief of research, Gartner. “When building new data centers, clients need to consider options that support business growth, while also saving time and costs.”

“Financial institutions create an enormous volume of data, which means they need to be able to quickly add capacity to their data center without disrupting business,” Bob Cashner, senior vice president, Corporate Properties, Wells Fargo. “HP Flexible DC is a promising new approach to the way organizations can meet computing demands efficiently while addressing capital-intensive data center costs.”

HP Flexible DC “butterfly” design

HP Flexible DC is based on a “butterfly” design featuring four prefabricated quadrants, or modules, that stem off a central administrative section. The offering uses industrial components to improve cost efficiencies as well as a streamlined building process with a variety of options for power and cooling distribution.

HP Critical Facilities Services – which provides consulting and design engineering and architecture services – collaborates with clients to evaluate their needs and to help with the planning and implementation of all aspects of their data center infrastructures.

“Clients, such as financial service providers, government entities, and cloud and colocation hosts, will find the scalable and modular nature of HP Flexible DC a compelling option,” said Kfir Godrich, chief technology officer, Technology Services, HP. “HP can help clients innovate the way they build and operate a greenfield data center for greater savings over its life span.”

Features of HP Flexible DC include:

• Prefabricated, standardized components allow clients to shorten the time it takes to build and deploy a data center, resulting in lower capital costs and faster time to market.
• The modular design extends clients’ ability to increase scalable capacity while retaining specified levels of reliability and redundancy.
• Specific configurations optimize the use of power and cooling resources to lower energy and water use, enabling clients to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and a facility’s carbon footprint.
• Air-cooled, rather than water-cooled, mechanical systems save clients power and potentially millions of gallons of water annually.

About HP

HP creates new possibilities for technology to have a meaningful impact on people, businesses, governments and society. The world’s largest technology company, HP brings together a portfolio that spans printing, personal computing, software, services and IT infrastructure to solve customer problems. More information about HP is available at www.hp.com.

Resource: Web Hosting News

“DediPower was in need of a Manhattan colocation facility to extend our state-side coverage and provide connectivity to our overseas customers,” said Craig Martin, CEO of DediPower. “We looked for the colocation partner within the U.S. that had the most strategic locations and the largest number of service providers we could choose from to ensure reliable application and storage service delivery. Our international and North American customers can directly tap into our infrastructure on a guaranteed, high-speed connection in the 60 Hudson Street location, without going over the public Internet. The Telx solution provides our managed private cloud network the high redundancy, security and connectivity choice we require.”

As a connectivity partner, Telx delivers a secure, connection-rich environment from which DediPower can offer low-latency access to its cloud applications and managed hosting network infrastructure, including its Content Delivery Network and its new Public Cloud, a solution that uses only best of breed hardware and dedicated support normally associated with private enterprise solutions. The Telx interconnection replaces the need for a public Internet connection, ensuring that DediPower’s cloud services are more secure, latency is reduced, quality of service is enhanced and the number of hops is minimized.

“We are pleased to welcome DediPower to our flagship 60 Hudson Street location,” said Brad Hokamp, CMO of Telx. “Telx’s colocation and interconnection solutions have helped cloud and managed hosting providers like DediPower improve the reliability, security, and latency of their on-demand infrastructure through our Global Marketplace of service providers.”

To learn more on Telx’s value to cloud providers, including improved network performance, reduced time to market and direct access to the industry’s largest ecosystem of leading telecommunications carriers, ISPs, content providers and enterprises, please visit http://telx.com/Industries/telx-cloud-computing-storage-and-applications.html.

About 60 Hudson Street
60 Hudson Street continues to be Telx’s flagship interconnection facility as well as the nerve center for international communications. Telx is a leading colocation and interconnection service provider within 60 Hudson Street. The building, referred to as the premier North American interconnection facility, is situated on the heart of the Hudson Street/Ninth Avenue fiber highway. This facility also provides low-latency access to Telx’s Financial Business Exchange (FBX) solution and Global Marketplace of providers. Telx’s New York colocation centers, including 60 Hudson Street and 111 8th Avenue, provide a managed, network-neutral, secure environment for core interconnection networking elements for carriers, ISPs, content providers and enterprise business customers.

About DediPower
A leading UK provider of managed hosting and data center solutions, DediPower makes internet and eBusiness innovation a reality and delivers outstanding ROI for organisations of all sizes. Current clients include Sony, Virgin, ITV, NHS and The BRIT Awards. Focused on delivering service excellence through its Support with Passion® philosophy, DediPower’s enterprise class data centers offer 100% availability and accredited data security to support business critical, data-rich, ecommerce, interactive and web-based applications. It provides managed hosting, managed private cloud, virtualization, multi-server clusters, and colocation services. DediPower is a winner of numerous hosting awards and is a Microsoft Gold certified partner and RedHat Ready hosting partner. DediPower’s headquarters is located in Reading Berkshire, UK. For additional information, visit www.dedipower.com.

About Telx
Telx is a leading provider of interconnection, colocation and business exchange services in strategic, high demand North American markets. With 15 premier facilities, Telx increases speed to market and reduces connectivity costs by providing direct connections to the industry’s highest performance networks and access to more than 800 leading telecommunications carriers, ISPs, content providers and enterprises. Telx is a privately held company headquartered in New York City with four facilities in the New York Metro area, two facilities in Chicago, two facilities in Dallas, three facilities in California, (Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Santa Clara) and facilities in Atlanta, Miami, Phoenix and Charlotte, N.C. For more information about Telx, visit www.telx.com.

Resource: Web Hosting News

These dedicated servers come with Quad-Core Intel Xeon 2.67Ghz CPUs, include 2GB of RAM that can be expanded up to 8GB and one hot-swappable 500GB SATA HDD with 3 extra hot-swap bays and the ability to use software or hardware RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5 & RAID 10.  1500 GB of data transfer per month on their premium fully redundant network is included plus a free remote reboot port that allows you to restart servers within seconds without the need to contact anyone at their NOC, value of $30 per month.

These dedicated servers are all located in their tier-1 premium facility in downtown Montreal; they operate their own private datacenter space.   The datacenter is known for its top security, air-conditioning and redundant electric power backed up by a big array of UPS’s and generators.  This added to their premium networked backed up by the internet’s top provider such as SAVVIS (Public, NASDAQ:SVVS), Cogent (Public, NASDAQ:CCOI), NLayer and Teleglobe.

The bundles are available in three types which make purchasing process very simple:

• The Performance Bundle is The Planet’s highest robust solution. It added to the Advanced and Essential Bundle an additional quad-core Web server for a total of three servers, they are fully managed with dedicated Cisco ASA 5510SP firewall, also a wide array of managed services, like backup, security and server monitoring.
• The Advanced Bundle has all the features of the Essential package, and a RAID 1 database server with 15,000RPM SAS drives to make database access very fast. This also includes superior load balancing, with three times the capacity and speed of the Essential Bundle.
• The Essential Bundle has two Intel quad-core servers with load balancing. This system is ideal for mission-critical applications.

Bryce Edwards, The Planet’s general manager for complex infrastructure said “Many SMBs require the ability to grow their hosted environments quickly and easily, yet aren’t sure where to start,” he also added “With our new Virtual Rack Solution Bundles, we’ve prepackaged three of our most popular virtual rack configurations, making it an easy choice to meet particular business requirements. All of our bundles feature drive-level redundancy, 1Gbps connection speed and bandwidth pooling, and customers receive additional value by taking advantage of low introductory pricing.”

There is also an offer from The Planet that ends on Dec. 31; they are the Virtual Rack Solution Bundles with unbeatable prices. The Advanced Bundle is priced now for $1,329.60 per month, this is a 20% savings. The Performance Bundle is priced at $2,048.85 per month; it is discounted for more than 25%. The Essential Bundle now has a price of $801.55 per month, normally the price is $943 per month.

The Planet’s clients now can add servers to their virtual or private racks at a big discount of up to 50% for the first two months. This discount is not applies on all of The Planet’s plans, Only certain plans including the Core2 Duo 4500, the Dual Xeon 5405and the Xeon 3040 has this discount. New private rack clients with more than three servers will receive even a big a 70 % discount on “shelf” prices. Moreover, The Planet has offers for about 50% discount on RAID cards for virtual and private rack clients. These discounts will stay until November 30, 2008, or “while supplies last”.

General Manager of the The Planet, Bryce Edwards explained “Ecommerce continues to grow, requiring businesses to have a strong online presence for complex infrastructure solutions,” he also added “The Planet’s private and virtual racks help businesses accommodate increased demands on IT infrastructure, with the benefits of unlimited server-to-server transfer, pooled bandwidth and advanced security technologies. With these promotions, our customers can prepare for growth during the holidays and beyond, while keeping capital expenditures to a minimum.”

The Planet web hosting is the place of more than 25,000 small and medium-size businesses by hosting about 13.3 million sites globally. The Planet’s Planet Alpha plans also offer self-managed dedicated servers while its plans “Planet Northstar” which are a managed hosting plans offers a fully managed web hosting plans.

“Intel Atom 330” server is an energy-saving product that was gladly chosen by the company team. The server is designed to be both very powerful and nature-friendly yet still keeping a very competitive price. “Intel Atom 330” sharply reduces the energy consumption about 75% when compared to other dedicated servers with the similar profile. The servers also use the dual core technology, which guarantees a better response time and speed of the server when compared to its low-cost competitors.

SiteGround web hosting provider customers compare the “Intel Atom 330” with the Pentium 4 that has been by now the company’s best-selling, low-cost dedicated server and also an industry standard. The “Intel Atom 330” has excelled as compared to the Pentium 4 in both features and price, and has already become the most preferred dedicated hosting solution at SiteGround.

“When we first heard about this server at SiteGround, we all loved it. The Intel Atom 330 gives us the chance to act in an environmentally responsible way without losing power or having to raise costs. It has a low voltage processor that saves so much energy and is yet so powerful”, says Tina Kesova, the Marketing Expert that was responsible for the launch of the new machine. “Our system administrators had run lots of tests to check its speed, durability, and the energy consumption levels. The results are impressive – the Intel Atom 330 has beaten any other server in its class we have ever used.”

SiteGround web hosting has adopted this technology so quickly and proves once again they are the kind of web hosting company that actively update its servers to offer the best and the latest technologies to its clients.

Just now, chose Dual Xeon and Pentium servers are priced from $70 /m and up, with discounts of up to 57 percent.

Starting now on, the Dual Xeon 3.2 SCSI and SATA are priced at $149 /m, which was $299. The Pentium4 2.4 is priced $79 /m, the previous price was $109. clients who purchase double or more of these servers by on order get the second Dual Xeon 3.2 SCSI or SATA discounted 57 percent, this is $170 less per month. The other Pentium4 2.4 can be purchased at $70 /m, a 36 percent savings.

These recent less expensive prices make a cost-effective way for customers which have interest in purchaing a second server to use as a business test bed or to pilot a new system offering,” said Urvish Vashi, The Planet’s general manager for dedicated hosting. “As with all Planet Alpha servers, customers will benefit from The Planet’s world-class network and 24/7 support.”

This offer is valid through Aug. 24, 2008. For more information, please visit the Web site at The Planet.

About The Planet

The Planel web hosting provider is the first provider web servers, they are hosting nearly 22,000 small – and medium-size businesses and 7.7 million website globaly. The Planet Alpha division provides the widest array of self-managed dedicated servers and modern services backed by 24x7x365 technical support. The Planet Northstar Managed Hosting division brings all together a proactive methodology and seasoned IT experts to deliver the optiumum managed hosting solution. With the best choice of servers, programing tools and the best support, backed by state-of-the-art facilities and an enterprise-class network, The Planet hosting makes IT into a big competitive gain that makes customers to grow their businesses.

The Planet adds that the new space will feature an energy-efficient design that utilizes improved measures to completely separate hot and cold air. This will improve the data center’s “coefficient of efficiency” to about 1.5. The coefficient of efficiency is an EPA- and Uptime Institute-recognized measurement of the total power necessary to operate a data center divided by the critical power, which is the energy required to operate its computers. The “ideal” ranking is 1.6.

The Planet further explains that the enhancement of the energy-efficient measures include extending the returns of the computer room air conditioning units through the ceiling and utilizing the space above the ceiling as a return air path. By using CPI ducted exhaust cabinets in the new phase, it says that it is taking the next steps beyond traditional “hot aisle-cold aisle” setups to completely isolate the hot and cold air in the data center.

The Planet’s Vice President of Facilities Jeff Lowenberg said “As energy costs continue to climb, operating our data centers at peak performance is absolutely critical, both to our company and to our customers,” he also added “Our goal is to use best practices and a practical approach to optimize our operations.”