Enterprises that are virtualizing their environments can include their virtual machines in disaster recovery and backup plans.

Companies are moving to virtualization to cut costs. But many do not manage or back up their virtual machines because they don’t have the tools or don’t know which tools to use.

Some virtualization vendors want to change that.

Take some of the recent offerings by the big boys in virtualization – VMware (NYSE: VMW), Citrix (NASDAQ: CTXS), Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) and Red Hat (NYSE: RHT). Each announced virtual environment management capabilities, although these will not be available until later this year at best.

No wonder vendors are moving with product plans — analyst firm Gartner predicts that worldwide server virtualization management software revenues will climb 42 percent, from $913.9 million in 2008 to $1.3 billion in 2009.

“Server virtualization management will be the primary source of growth in the virtualization market as hyper visor software functionality -– key to virtualizing a server -– rapidly moves to hardware,” Alan Dayley, research director at Gartner, said in a statement.

Citrix, Microsoft and Red Hat are trying to challenge VMware in management capabilities, which VMware is banking on as its next area of growth. But Andi Mann, research director at Enterprise Management Associates, thinks VMware will remain king of the hill in virtualized systems management, at least in the near future.

“Many of the management capabilities Microsoft and Citrix announced are just catching up to VMware’s advanced add-on features,” Mann told InternetNews.com by e-mail. And Red Hat is not even in the picture, as far as Mann is concerned.

“Red Hat’s KVM is way back in the pack in terms of even the most basic features and manageability,” he said. “Red Hat is trying to get into the virtualization fight, but it is leading with a glass chin, and is just going to get a bloody nose for its trouble.”

VMware unveiled VMware vCenter Server Heartbeat, which uses technology licensed from its partner, Neverfail, at VMworld Europe 2009 in Paris. Heartbeat will monitor and manage the automatic failover of VMware’s vCenter Server, which centrally manages, controls and automates both physical and virtual systems.

“With a combination of VMware and Neverfail or another third party high availability tool your whole physical and virtual data center is covered,” Mann said. Solutions for automated recovery and disaster recovery of virtualized systems make businesses more competitive and profitable because they speed up recovery from crashes and system failures, he added.

Taking VMware head on

Meanwhile, Citrix has unveiled Citrix Essentials, which offers dynamic virtualization management tools for both its own XenCenter and Microsoft’s Hyper-V, and Red Hat has announced its own set of virtualization management tools for the desktop and server.

Citrix’s stance is particularly strong, as, earlier this month, it entered a partnership with VMLogix under which it will integrate VMLogix LabManager and StageManager into its products, bring application lifecycle management capabilities to XenServer. These capabilities span different virtualization platforms, giving Citrix more oomph, as the other major vendors have platform-specific products.

Large tool vendors such as Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ), IBM (NYSE: IBM) and CA (NASDAQ: CA) have extended their tools to manage the physical IT infrastructure to virtual environments, but many experts say these are not quite up to scratch because virtual systems need to be managed differently from physical ones. And smaller players like ManageIQ, Avocent (NASDAQ: AVCT) and Apani are – well – smaller vendors, so their impact on the enterprise market, which tends to be wary of small players, is limited, experts say.

On the other hand, all the major virtualization players focus mainly on their own environments, so that will hamper their growth. “The average environment has multiple hypervisors, and will retain a mixed physical-virtual deployment through 2010 at least,” Mann said.

“Solutions that manage multiple hypervisors, and both physical and virtual systems, are going to be the winners in the long run.”

Second-Generation AMD Opteron™ processors with Direct Connect Architecture introduce several new features including quad-core upgradeability, AMD Virtualization™ (AMD-V™), and energy efficient DDR2 memory. In addition, Second-Generation AMD Opteron processors are designed to advance AMD’s performance-per-watt capabilities and leverage the proven technologies introduced in 2003 with first-generation AMD Opteron processors.

Second-Generation AMD Opteron processors are offered in three series: the 1000 Series (up to 1P/2-core), the 2000 Series (up to 2P/4-core), and the 8000 Series (4P/8-core to 8P/16-core). The 1000 Series is built on AMD’s new Socket AM2. The 2000 Series and 8000 Series are built on AMD’s new Socket F (1207).

The AMD Opteron processor integrates key system elements:

Second-Generation AMD Opteron™ Processor Benefits

Second-Generation AMD Opteron™ processors with DDR2 memory extend the industry-leading performance trajectory established by first-generation AMD Opteron processors while offering a seamless upgrade path to quad-core performance and leading-edge solutions to help run your business applications.

AMD Opteron processors feature a Common Core Architecture that is consistent across 1-way, 2-way, 4-way, and 8-way systems and is also consistent with previous AMD Opteron processors, helping minimize the cost of transition and maximize past investments in software optimization.

AMD64 technology

• Runs existing installed base of 32-bit applications and operating systems at peak performance, while providing a 64-bit capable migration path
• Designed to enable 64-bit computing while remaining compatible with the vast x86 software infrastructure
• Enables a single architecture across 32- and 64-bit environments

Direct Connect Architecture

• AMD’s revolutionary Direct Connect Architecture helps eliminate the bottlenecks inherent in traditional front-side bus architectures
• Direct Connect Architecture connects the processors, integrated memory controller, and I/O directly to the CPU and communicates at CPU speed
• HyperTransport™ technology provides a scalable bandwidth interconnect between processors, I/O subsystems, and other chipsets, with up to three coherent HyperTransport technology links providing up to 24.0 GB/s peak bandwidth per processor
• Integrated Memory Controller on-die DDR2 DRAM memory controller offers available memory bandwidth up to 10.7 GB/s (with DDR2-667) per processor

Quad-core upgradeability

• AMD Opteron processors with DDR2 memory are designed to offer a seamless upgrade path from dual-core to quad-core when they are available in 2007 in the same thermal envelope to help leverage existing investments
• Maintain the same platform at the same power efficiency

AMD Virtualization™ (AMD-V™)

• Hardware assisted AMD Virtualization™ and Direct Connect Architecture provide a balanced approach to help improve virtualization performance, enabling more virtual machines to run per server
• AMD-V™ reduces overhead by selectively intercepting instructions destined for guest environments
• Direct Connect Architecture helps guests run at near native speed
• Virtualization-aware integrated memory controller provides efficient isolation of virtual machine memory

Enhanced performance-per watt

• Energy-efficient DDR2 memory uses up to 30% less power than DDR1 and up to 58% less power than FBDIMM
• AMD PowerNow!™ technology with Optimized Power Management can deliver performance on demand while minimizing power consumption
• Consistent standard power roadmap with low-power options
• DDR2 platforms can upgrade to quad-core AMD Opteron™ processors in 2007 within existing thermal bands for significantly better performance-per-watt

Learn more about Next-Generation AMD Opteron™ processors

Features and Benefits:

• AMD64 Technology
• Direct Connect Architecture
• Quad-Core Upgradeability
• AMD Virtualization™
• Enhanced Performance-per-Watt

Performance:

• Benchmarks
• Competitive Comparisons

Product Information:

• Key Architectural Features

All AMD Opteron™ Processor Product Information

Consolidation of assets is a key mantra for challenging economic times. It’s also one that is being trumpeted by Juniper Networks in a new datacenter infrastructure push that has virtualization as a key component.

The idea behind Juniper’s new Data Center Infrastructure solution set is that by using some of the company’s newest approaches and technologies, a business can reduce the amount of equipment required as well as the number of links across the various pieces of equipment — ultimately cutting costs.

The solution is built around the newly released SRX Dynamic Services appliances and the EX switch lineup.

Wrapping the offerings together is aimed at capitalizing on efforts by IT to cope with growing infrastructure needs while reducing expenses in what Juniper’s main rival Cisco recently described as a a gloomy outlook for IT spending.

"In today’s economy, where people are tightening their belts and possibly restraining spending as they go into 2009, there is even less money than there was before to do things that are innovative from the IT perspective," Mike Banic, vice president of marketing for Juniper’s Ethernet platforms business group, told InternetNews.com.

Banic argued that there is too much complexity in modern networks, and by making networks simpler to manage, companies can save on costs — particularly by consolidating devices. Instead of having multiple switches to handle a section of enterprise traffic, traffic can be collapsed onto a lesser number of switches.

In Juniper’s case, its new EX4200 switch now has a virtual chassis technology that enables it to aggregate up to 10 physical switches. Virtual chassis technology is also used by other switch vendors, including Nortel and Cisco, among others.

Virtualization of datacenter assets can also help reduce disaster recovery costs. Juniper’s technology also can help enable replication — with one datacenter spanning two physical locations. In such a setup, what are actually separate networks will look and operate as one.

The way that the Juniper datacenter virtualization works is that when the two datacenters are located nearby, the virtual chassis technology on the EX switches can be extended. As a result, the two datacenters would have reduced data latency between them.

By using MPLS (define) (Multi protocol label switching) Juniper can now extend a virtual LAN, or VLAN (define), across datacenters that still have data link integrity intact. (The data link layer of the IP stack is also known as level 2, in reference to the Open System Interconnection networking framework model.)

Using Juniper’s approach, Banic claimed virtual servers could be moved across datacenters. VMware’s Vmotion technology is the way that VMware-based virtual servers are moved across servers, though typically those servers are in the same datacenter.

"We’re using the MPLS VPN to preserve the layer 2 VLAN," Banic explained. "Right now, to run VMotion, the source and the target has to be in the same layer 2 domain, and they cannot be across a routed interface. So that becomes a stumbling block for disaster recovery across the WAN between datacenters."

Banic claimed that with the Juniper solution, live migration of virtual servers can be done with the servers remaining in the same state.

Juniper is not alone in trying to enable virtual datacenter migrations: Earlier this year, Cisco rolled out its strategy to enable virtual machines to move across datacenters.

Though Juniper is moving toward a fully virtualization-enabled network, Banic noted that Juniper is not getting into the business of trying to manage or deploy virtual machines.

"What we will do is open hooks into JUNOS [Juniper's network operating system that is found on its devices] and our management applications that allows them to set network policies and configure the network to which the physical server and VM’s will attach," Banic explained. "Our position is to provide the open interfaces to the applications that can manage the server and control the VMs."

Banic said vendors like IBM Tivoli and VMware would be suitable for managing a Juniper virtual network. The company already has an expansive partnership with IBM for its EX switch lineup — a fact that Juniper CEO Kevin Johnson cited on Juniper’s recent earnings call. Banic noted that Juniper also has a working relationship with HP as well, and that the IBM partnership is not exclusive.

Overall, the message that Juniper is aiming to push is that it can help simplify for networking topology.

"The network design is simplified by collapsing layers," Banic said. "We have one operating system for switches, routers and security platforms. By eliminating layers and reducing the number of devices, we actually eliminate a lot of links that are used to simply connect switches to switches, and eliminate a number of logical devices needed to manage them."