Data Center Briefs: September 29, 2008 - Systems Management News On The Web

Sort By :DateRelevance

DEPARTMENTS

HOME

TOP STORIES

ON THE WEB

BZ MEDIA

Printable version

Data Center Briefs: September 29, 2008
By Systems Management News Team

September 29, 2008 — New Products
SIP Print announced the general availability of a new line of call recording appliances aimed at small and medium-sized businesses. The SIP Print appliances work with a variety of VoIP phone systems; the list of supported suppliers includes Avaya, Cisco, Mitel, NEC, Nortel, ShoreTel, 3Com, Toshiba and Zultys. The user interface offers extension and name lookup features, archive control and audit trailing, on-the-fly column sorting, and e-mail-ready call file formats. The appliances are designed to support environments of up to 200 seats per physical location and, according to the company, are compliant with both CALEA (Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act) and the SIP 2.0 specification.

IBM announced a new tool for its Virtual Infrastructure Access platform that aims to reduce the complexity of storage management in virtualized environments. The Virtual Storage Organizer (VSO) is based on work done by IBM Research and is said to dramatically reduce the physical storage requirements of virtual images. The company also claims that by using VSO to create new images, customers could reduce the time for that task to a quarter the time previously needed.

Proginet announced that its Slingshot Vault e-mail attachment management appliance would be generally available this fall. The appliance is designed to offer integrated archiving and works with a number of corporate e-mail systems. It secures attachments by encrypting them while they are in transit between sender and recipient, and keeps track of its own activity at each step with logging and time-stamping features.

Updates
Aqua Connect released a new version of its namesake terminal server for Mac OS X, adding compatibility with the 10.5 (Leopard) release of the OS and an implementation of Microsoft’s Remote Desktop Protocol. Aqua Connect Terminal Server 3.0 is claimed by the company to be the first licensed implementation of an RDP server on the Apple platform. The update also has new administration features, including CPU prioritization, session shadowing, and user session auditing. Aqua Connect says it offers “tighter” interaction between Active Directory and both Mac OS X’s Open Directory and Workgroup Manager. The company plans to add other functionality to the 3.0 release, including user- and group-based blacklisting and whitelisting of applications, an iTunes-like “Cover Flow” view of user sessions, and user-level monitoring of application licenses.

Catbird announced a new release of V-Security, which the company describes as a SOA-architected security platform for virtualized systems. V-Security 2.0 offers rogue VM quarantining, network access control, “sprawl management” features, intrusion detection and protection services, vulnerability monitoring, policy-based compliance and enforcement, and auditing features. The cloud-based service can now supply reporting data to third-party dashboards for comprehensive views of the virtual infrastructure, as well as reporting and management through the Catbird Control Center. It also offers a logical map of network flow that analyzes which VMs are communicating with each other, indicates the traffic’s degree of authorization and offers correlations to security events.

Essentio released a new version of its data management tools. Archivist 3.0 adds new compliance functionality, including built-in approval workflows, automated archive processes and audit trails. It works with a range of ERP systems, such as Lawson, Oracle, PeopleSoft and SAP. It can use IBM DB2, Microsoft SQL Server or Oracle Database as a data store on systems running AIX, Linux, System i, Unix and Windows.

Quest Software updated its product line to synchronize its tools with SQL Server 2008. The company has reworked the UI of the LiteSpeed 5.0 backup and recovery software, which also sees new analysis and categorization capabilities and compression technology. Also refreshed as part of update were the Spotlight reporting tool, Capacity Manager, the Change Director administration utility and the Toad editor.

SmarterTools released an update to its Windows mail server software that adds the ability for end users to synchronize data over the air with BlackBerry devices and iPhones, without requiring BlackBerry Enterprise Server or other plug-ins. SmarterMail 5.5 is described by the company as an alternative to Microsoft Exchange, with built-in anti-spam and anti-virus programs, as well as archiving, reporting and other features. It is managed through an AJAX-driven Web interface.

WatchGuard Technologies introduced its first extensible threat management network security appliance, the XTM 1050. The device is expected to be available by year’s end and is built around a dozen line-speed Gigabit Ethernet ports, four of which can be upgraded to fiber connections. The XTM 1050 uses HTTPS inspection via a proxy to provide full inspection of secured traffic, which closes a loophole exploited by malicious applications and components. It also uses NAT, port obfuscation, and proxies for SIP and H.323 traffic as the foundation of its ability to secure VoIP systems. Other security services can be implemented on the XTM 1050 through a subscription. The company has added a scriptable CLI to its management GUI as part of the XTM rollout, with the aim of making multi-device management easier. The XTM 1050 can also be configured using role-based access controls.

Betas
VMLogix announced the beta release of its forthcoming StageManager, an application and service staging system that works with popular virtualization platforms like Citrix XenServer and EMC’s VMware. StageManager, expected to be generally available by the end of the year, works in a variety of scenarios, according to the company. These include staging multi-VM configurations that host business applications or IT services, importing multi-machine configurations from test labs, exporting the final, tested configurations to production systems, and cloning a production environment configuration to provide a base for the next round of pre-production and testing. StageManager offers customized staging workflows, Web console access and single-mouse-click stage migration. It also can be used in Active Directory and LDAP environments with multiple directory service organization units.

VKernel is beta testing a free virtual appliance for VMware ESX systems that the company likens to Google. The SearchMyVM utility indexes 75 attributes for searching across hosts, clusters, resource pools and snapshots. According to the company, it offers single-screen management and auto-synchronizes with VMware’s Virtual Center in the same fashion as VKernel’s other virtual appliances. The company’s other products include tools that focus on cost visibility and capacity analysis.

Related Search Term(s): backup & recovery, communications, data centers, e-mail, security, virtualization, Apple, Aqua Connect, Catbird, Essentio, IBM, Proginet, Quest, SIP Print, SmarterTools, VKernel, VMLogix, WatchGuard

Share this link: http://www.sysmannews.com/link/32915

EMAIL THIS ARTICLE

SEND FEEDBACK

MORE DATA CENTER NEWS