Daily Archives: March 22, 2010

7 posts

SAN SnapShot Backup v3.0 for VMWare

SnapShot Backup for VMWare is the New Generation of Backup for VMWare. It reduces operational costs, simplifies backup architecture and reduces backup impact by integrating VMWare backup with multi-vendor SAN arrays into single solution.

SnapShot Backup for VMWare eliminates the need for media/proxy servers, reading/copying of data, backup windows, and vStorage/VCB snapshot based backup.

Ivan Tsarynny, Ardeo Logic’s President and CEO explains: “Data Backup is often a huge struggle for businesses of all sizes. Backup is a complex ecosystem of infinitely growing amount of data, servers, disk/tape systems and networks. Most firms have difficulty completing backups in the backup window, and a large number of restores fail.

“The most common challenges for ‘data read & copy’ based backups are:

Failed backups
Failed Restores
Expensive Infrastructure: Media servers, network and disk storage.

“Our clients asked for a new solution that eliminates performance impacts, complexity, and overhead costs inherent by the traditional approaches.

“Commonsense solution is simple:

Safe, Instant and Zero Impact backup that keeps your business running 24x7x365
Restore of individual files, guest VM and entire datacenters in seconds
Media server-less backup process that eliminates data transfer, network impact and storage duplication.

“Imagine a day when your data is backed up by SAN snapshots. Your data is safe 24/7/365, is never copied through media servers, and can be restored in seconds. Restore requests for individual files, VM servers and entire ESX hosts are done in seconds, directly from SAN snapshots and replicas. You have piece of mind that your data is safe and you know that you lowered your total backup costs by approximately 90%.

“Ask yourself if it’s something you would enjoy?”

SnapShot Backup v3.0 for VMWare with granular file, disk and server level restore offers:

100% Reliable Backup – uses your trusted SAN hardware for data backup and restore. Hardware snapshots unlike software backup is near 100% successful
Zero Impact Backup eliminates backup windows, backups can run 24x7x365
Simplicity – 1 SnapShot Backup server replaces up to 30 traditional media servers
Reduced Impact – no backup data is transferred over the network
Immediate ROI and Low cost of ownership – “proxy server-less” backup process, no need to purchase VMWare Backup License for all servers and no storage wasted for holding backups

SnapShot Backup for VMWare performs Backups using SAN Snapshot functionality of your SAN. It seamlessly integrates with your existing SAN arrays, discovers Data Volumes, VMWare datastores, VMDK files associated guest VM servers.

SnapShot Backup v3.0 lets you restore VM servers to the exact “Up and Running” state by creating VM’s RAM snapshot, quiescence of VM’s file systems, and for extra protection takes an optional VMWare based snapshots.

Features:

Instant SAN snapshot backups & restores
File & server level restore from SAN snapshot
Quiescence VM’s file system before SAN snapshot
VM’s RAM snapshot before SAN snapshot
VM’s vmdk files can be located on multiple LUNs and Datastores
Optional VM level snapshot before SAN snapshot
Traditional vStorage and VCB backup with Change Block Tracking
vSphere 4, ESX, ESXi and vCenter support
Integrates your SAN array with VMware platform backup
Cross vendor SAN array support: EMC, NETAPP, and more
Windows MMC GUI and service that runs on Windows 32/64 bit Virtual or Physical servers

Pricing and Availability
SnapShot Backup for VMware is available now for public preview. Pricing starts at $499 per VMWare server CPU socket. Book your one-on-one WebEx demonstration by phone 1-877-272-8239 or email [email protected]

About Ardeo Logic Inc
Ardeo Logic, is located in Toronto, Canada and is a VMware Technology Alliance Partner; provides trusted and innovative data protection products for VMWare platform. Learn more about Ardeo Logic at www.ArdeoLogic.com.

Steadfast Networks Announces Carbon Neutral Hosting Services

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Hosting News

Steadfast Networks, a leading Chicago based colocation services and dedicated server hosting provider, announced its environmental green initiative by implementing a 100% carbon offset for staff commuting, office usage, core infrastructure, networking equipment, shared web hosting, VPS hosting, and backup services. Steadfast Networks is certified “carbon neutral” by Carbonfund.org, an environmentally-friendly organization that helps businesses reduce and offset their climate impact.

“Moving steadily forward in the 21st century does not mean trampling all over our natural resources, so we have teamed up with Carbonfund.org and implemented a variety of green initiative programs to help preserve our natural resources,” says Karl Zimmerman, CEO of Steadfast Networks. “The same high quality and exceptional service Steadfast Networks stands for in our managed servers, colocation hosting services, and web hosting services is the standard we aspire to for maintaining a healthy environment.”
In addition to becoming carbon neutral and purchasing carbon offsets, Steadfast Networks encourages employees to commute by foot, bike, or public transportation, and in some cases, work from home. To increase efficiency and help the environment, local vendors such as Amadi Systems provide more than 90% of Steadfast Networks’ equipment, cutting down on the emissions caused while transporting. Steadfast Networks orders the equipment with no packing materials in order to reduce the trash produced. All paper and cardboard products, equipment, hardware, and servers building-wide are recycled.

“Not having to unpack equipment has increased the speed of operations and made our Chicago hosting services and data centers run more efficiently,” says Zimmerman. “Highly efficient network systems and dedicated server hosting also reduce carbon outputs, and those are options we also offer to customers who want to reduce their carbon imprint.”

Steadfast Network’s base operations, shared web hosting, VPS hosting, and backup services are carbon neutral. Customers who wish to receive carbon neutral colocation services and dedicated server hosting indicate that choice by contacting a Steadfast Networks representative or when placing an order. Additionally, Steadfast Networks’ low power Atom servers, Xeon processors and Intel solid state drives lower operational costs while reducing the carbon footprint associated with hosting services. Providing dedicated server, colocation, and hosting services without up-selling a more energy-intensive IT solution a customer does not need further reduces
environmental impact.

“People who are passionate about caring for our world are loyal to companies who share that same sense of responsibility,” says Zimmerman. “Customers appreciate transparency and businesses with carbon neutral hosting services can let their clients know they are standing up and doing their part for our world.”

For more information on Steadfast Networks’ green initiative, or to suggest more ways to reduce the carbon footprint, visit http://steadfast.net/corporate/green.php.

About Steadfast Networks

Established in 1998, Chicago based hosting company Steadfast Networks, delivers high quality, powerful servers through reliable dedicated server hosting, colocation server hosting, virtual private servers, shared web hosting, and dedicated game server hosting. Steadfast’s award-winning services and dedicated support staff help customers from all over the world 24/7/365. Customers can choose basic hosting or a customized, fully managed dedicated server hosting solution. Steadfast Networks offers 100% carbon neutral hosting services as an environment-friendly provider.

To learn more about Steadfast Networks, visit http://www.steadfast.net

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 with Increased Virtualization Performance

Hosting News

Red Hat, Inc., the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced the global availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3, featuring the latest open source, commercial-strength technology innovations. In the third update to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, customers will receive a wide range of enhancements, including significantly increased virtualization scalability, expanded hardware platform support and incorporation of OpenJDK Java technologies. Customers with a Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription will receive the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 update, which is available for immediate download from Red Hat Network.

The primary new features of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 include:
“Further strengthening our long-standing relationship with Red Hat, we have collaborated to make the newly available Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 operating platform run great on Intel® Xeon® processor-based platforms,” said Doug Fisher, vice president, Intel Software and Services Group, and general manager, Systems Software Division. “Together, the compelling combination of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 and Intel’s current and future Intel Xeon processor-based servers enable customers to run the most demanding, business-critical workloads on high-performance, cost-effective, reliable platforms.”
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 also includes enhancements spanning many other components of the leading open source operating system, with the solution’s Release Notes documenting over 150 additions and updates. These new features and improvements range from general kernel, device driver and architectural enhancements to simplified desktop networking and full support of the GFS2 file system. In combination, these many enhancements reinforce Red Hat Enterprise Linux as the industry’s leading commercial-strength open source operating system environment – from the desktop to the mainframe.
“With Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3, Red Hat has once again delivered a rich set of features, developed through rapid innovation with the open source community, that can increase the capability and drive down the cost of customers’ Information Technology,” said Scott Crenshaw, vice president, Platform Business Unit at Red Hat. “With the challenge to carve costs out of IT budgets, the flexibility, reliability and simplicity of an Enterprise Linux subscription has more value to customers than ever. Our customers have access to all the features of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 today.”
For more information on the features and updates in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3, read the blog onwww.press.redhat.com. For more information about Red Hat Enterprise Linux, visitwww.redhat.com/rhel.
About Red Hat, Inc.

Red Hat, the world’s leading open source solutions provider, is headquartered in Raleigh, NC with over 65 offices spanning the globe. CIOs ranked Red Hat as one of the top vendors delivering value in Enterprise Software for five consecutive years in the CIO Insight Magazine Vendor Value survey. Red Hat provides high-quality, affordable technology with its operating system platform, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, together with applications, management and Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) solutions, including JBoss Enterprise Middleware. Red Hat also offers support, training and consulting services to its customers worldwide. Learn more:http://www.redhat.com

Iron Mountain Adds New Service for Internet Domain Name Registrars

Domain

Iron Mountain Digital, the technology arm of information management services company Iron Mountain Incorporated (NYSE: IRM), today announced the availability of the ICANN Deposit Audit Service (IDAS) application for the systematic analysis of Internet registrar escrow deposits. This new service further reduces risks for consumers and businesses that have registered domain names with ICANN-accredited registrars. ICANN is the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the organization that oversees the allocation and administration of generic top-level domain names (such as those ending in .com, .net, .org, etc.). ICANN also governs which organizations can become domain name registrars for generic top-level domains. Registrars are the entities that sell, register, and renew domain names for Internet users.

With the ICANN Deposit Audit Service application, Iron Mountain systematically audits registrar escrow deposits, measures the integrity of those deposits, and reports the results to ICANN. The new application supplements Iron Mountain’s Registrar Data Escrow service. With this service, domain name registrars periodically escrow their registration information records to safeguard these intellectual property assets. Because the registration data is placed in an escrow account with Iron Mountain and verified through the IDAS application, it can be effectively retrieved by ICANN in the event of a technical, operational, or business failure of a registrar.

“The goal of the data escrow program is to help ensure the security and stability of the Domain Name System by protecting the data associated with registered domain names in a secure escrow account,” said Mike Zupke, ICANN’s registrar liaison manager. “Iron Mountain’s Deposit Audit Service is the next step in a full range of programs and procedures that will work to safeguard registrants and maintain Internet stability.”

“By escrowing and verifying the integrity of domain name registration information records, Iron Mountain is helping to protect consumers and businesses that have registered domain names with ICANN-accredited registrars,” explained John Boruvka, vice president of intellectual property management at Iron Mountain Digital. “As a result, they can retrieve their registration information data, even if the registrar goes out of business.”

In 2007, Iron Mountain was selected by ICANN to provide escrow services through its Registrar Data Escrow service, which is available to the more than 900 ICANN-accredited domain name registrars and protects registration data for the more than 110 million domain names they support. In 2008, Iron Mountain implemented automated processing for Registrar Data Escrow deposits.

Now, in addition to escrowing registration information records, registrar deposits will be periodically audited by the escrow agent to verify that escrowed data matches publicly available registration information records. Iron Mountain’s ICANN Deposit Audit Service was developed to meet this need.

For more information, visit http://www.ironmountain.com/resources/services/icann.asp

Arsys Offers a New Class of Cloud Services for Small Businesses With Parallels Small Business Panel

Cloud-enablement leader, Parallels, announced today at WebhostingDay that Arsys has launched Parallels Small Business Panel to simplify and diversify its Cloud services offering for small businesses and grow its share of the European market. Spain’s leading provider of domain name registration, web hosting and advanced Internet services is offering its 250,000+ customers Parallels Small Business Panel free on all virtual private servers.

“Like Parallels, we feel that the small business market is where the big growth potential in the cloud is. Offering an ’IT in a Box’ solution like Parallels Small Business Panel helps us differentiate our offerings by increasing the range of services we deliver to our small business customers,” said Faustino Jiménez, CEO of Arsys.
Parallels Small Business Panel is a game-changing control panel designed specifically for small businesses. As such, the panel offers simple wizards and productivity tools for collaboration, file sharing and business management. Users have access to over 200 applications making self-service possible for all employees using the solution.
“The self-managed, wizard-based Small Business Panel means non-technical people can install the right application with a single click, so they can focus on their core business without relying on heavy IT investment, making it very attractive for any small business,” said Faustino Jiménez, CEO of Arsys.
Parallels Small Business Panel gives users an intuitive interface designed to connect employees to the right applications, which can be installed with a single click and no need for special training or technical knowledge. In addition, Parallels Small Business Panel incorporates the functionality of additional Parallels solutions for free, such as Parallels Sitebuilder and Parallels Power Pack and other free applications, including WordPress, SugarCRM, Droopal and Mambo.
“This has been one of our most successful product releases and delivers profitable services to small businesses. Parallels Small Business Panel fills the growing IT needs of small businesses,” explains Jack Zubarev, President, Service Provider Division at Parallels. “Parallels really values partnering with innovative Cloud services providers such as Arsys, and we’re committed to delivering products that enable them to move beyond basic hosting services and offer more value-added applications and services.”
About Parallels
Parallels is a worldwide leader in virtualization and automation software that optimizes computing for consumers, businesses, and cloud services providers across all major hardware, operating systems, and virtualization platforms. Founded in 1999, Parallels is a fast-growing company with more than 700 employees in North America, Europe, and Asia. For more information, please visitwww.parallels.com.
About Arsys
Founded in 1996, Arsys pioneered the domain name registration service in Spain and is currently the Spanish leading provider of domain name registration, web hosting and advanced Internet services and among top-ranked companies in Europe. The Group has more than 675,000 domain names under management and serves over 250,000 clients worldwide. For more information about Arsys, please visitwww.arsys.net

WebECS Announces 13 Years of Windows Hosting

Hosting News

WebECS, a leading Microsoft Windows server and Windows ASP.NET web hosting company, announced today its 13th year of providing expert Windows hosting solutions for both large and small businesses worldwide. WebECS is one of the few leading Windows hosting companies with over a decade of providing reliable Windows hosting services.

“At WebECS, we focus on what we know best – Windows web hosting – to give our clients the best care in terms of features, cost, and speed of service – and we have been doing it for over 13 years,” says Kyle Beckham, President of WebECS. “Every WebECS engineer and technician is a Windows expert with years of Windows hosting experience, and can assist all types of businesses with their Windows hosting.”

All WebECS support staff and employees are located in Columbus, Ohio. As a result of WebECS’ 13 years of Windows hosting experience, the company has developed one of the fastest support response times in the industry. WebECS support technicians receive questions at all hours, most of which get resolved within half an hour or less, even in the middle of the night.

“No matter what time it is, and no matter how complex a question someone has about their Windows hosting account, they receive prompt and thorough service – every time,” says Beckham. “People trust us to keep their businesses running at maximum efficiency, and at WebECS we work hard to earn that trust.”

When businesses utilizing Microsoft Windows ASP.NET shared hosting and Windows dedicated server hosting outgrow their hosting plan, WebECS determines present and future network needs as well as advises on optimal system and setup requirements. WebECS offers Windows virtual private hosting, virtual dedicated hosting plans and managed hosting plans, along with flexible customized hosting packages with attention given to a seamless transition.

“Business growth should bring excited planning for new projects and ventures, not headaches about disk space and bandwidth,” says Beckham. “WebECS Windows server and hosting experts help businesses make a knowledgeable, cost-effective and easy transition to more robust Windows web hosting.”

WebECS continues to celebrate its 13 years of providing Windows ASP.NET web hosting and Windows virtual private servers to global, national and local businesses by launching new partnerships, technologies, and software bundles. WebECS also offers Windows reseller hosting plans so companies may offer web hosting to their customers without having to own the infrastructure and hire system administrators. Customers are encouraged to visit webecs.com to learn more about WebECS Windows reseller hosting plans, asp.net hosting, virtual hosting or managed services.

About WebECS, Inc.

Established in 1997, WebECS is a privately owned hosting company specializing in affordable and reliable Windows based hosting services including support for all versions of ASP.NET hosting, Windows 2003 hosting, Windows 2008 hosting, Windows dedicated SQL Server 2008, Windows VPS hosting, Windows VDS hosting, and Windows managed dedicated servers. WebECS also offers virtual dedicated server clients a huge software savings with the addition of the SmarterTools software bundle.

The WebECS data center gets data transit from ten Tier 1 backbone providers, including AT&T, Qwest, Level 3, UUNET and Verio, and have multi-gigabytes of high quality provisioned data capacity with virtually unlimited scalability. WebECS does not utilize bandwidth from any “discount” providers. Access is monitored using Proximity Security Badge Access and Digital Security Video Surveillance. The WebECS data center offers complete redundancy in power, HVAC, fire suppression, network connectivity, and security and is the optimal location to serve your applications to the world.

For more information about WebECS, visit http://www.webecs.com.

2009 DEMOgod Winner gwabbit Debuts World’s First Automatic Contact Cloud

Cloud

gwabbit, LLC, the only provider of automated solutions for the contact cloud, today announced gwab-o-sphere?, the world’s first automatic contact cloud. Acting as a “universal remote control” for all your contacts, the gwab-o-sphere automatically receives contacts from gwabbit contact capture products, and then syncs with key contact repositories and social networks like Salesforce.com®, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. The gwab-o-sphere automatically monitors contacts for changes, maintaining the most current and accurate source of contacts available. The gwab-o-sphere also offers the ability to mash-up its contact data with key communications service providers like FreeConference.com. The gwab-o-sphere can be seen at booth #36 during DEMO Spring 2010. gwabbit also announced today its partnership with FreeConference.com (See separate announcement titled, Gwabbit Teams With FreeConference.com).

The gwab-o-sphere contact cloud is the latest from 2009 DEMOgod winner gwabbit®, maker of award-winning gwabbit contact capture products for Outlook® and BlackBerry®, which automatically search and identify contacts embedded in emails and adds or updates that information to your address book.

“gwabbit wowed us at last year’s DEMO with its elegantly useful contact management solution,” said Matt Marshall, Executive Producer of DEMO. “With gwab-o-sphere, they are taking it to the next level with a cloud-powered contact management solution that allows users to keep all their contacts? wherever that information lives? updated automatically in real-time.”

A Universal Remote for Contact Management
Today the challenge of keeping your contacts updated and synced is compounded by the many devices, social networks and databases people use to store their contact information. The typical person can have their contacts stored on their smartphone, Outlook address book, CRM database and various social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn. Keeping this information current and in sync is an onerous and manual task that most people don’t bother with or do poorly.

This is where gwabbit contact capture products come in. Contacts grabbed by gwabbit for Outlook and BlackBerry are automatically added to the gwab-o-sphere, and then synced with contact repositories and social networks like Salesforce.com, Facebook, etc. The gwab-o-sphere then allows all the various contact repositories to “talk” to each other so contacts can be automatically added and updated, ensuring that they are always current no matter where the information lies.

“The gwab-o-sphere solves a nagging problem in contact management that no one has been able to answer until today,” said Todd Miller, president and founder, gwabbit. “How do you keep your contacts fresh, current and synced without tedious and time-consuming manual updates? The gwab-o-sphere is the only solution that does this all automatically so you don’t have to.”

Pricing and Availability

The gwab-o-sphere will be available in Q2 2010 free of charge to all gwabbit users, including gwabbit for Outlook and the Premium and free versions of gwabbit for BlackBerry, and can be downloaded from www.gwabbit.com or BlackBerry App World www.blackberry.com/appworld).

About gwabbit, LLC
Founded in 2008 gwabbit (formerly Technicopia, LLC) is the only provider of applications designed to manage the contact cloud. Its flagship product gwabbit, grabs contact information embedded in emails and automatically updates or creates new contact files. Recipient of the DEMO 09 DEMOgod awards, gwabbit for Outlook and gwabbit for BlackBerry are the fastest ways to manage contacts on a mobile device or desktop. Whether you are on the road or at the desk, gwabbit delivers Email Contact Management (ECM) solutions at a price point you can afford. For more information or to purchase gwabbit, visit www.gwabbit.com

About DEMO

Produced by the IDG Enterprise events group, the worldwide DEMO conferences focus on emerging technologies and new products innovations, which are hand selected from across the spectrum of the technology marketplace. The DEMO conferences have earned their reputation for consistently identifying cutting-edge technologies and helping entrepreneurs secure venture funding and establish critical business. For more information on the DEMO conferences, visit http://www.demo.com/