Novell Redefines Workload Management for the Mixed IT Data Center

Novell today announced significant enhancements to its PlateSpin® Workload Management solution. Leveraging Novell's strengths in interoperability, the new PlateSpin Recon, PlateSpin Migrate, PlateSpin Protect and PlateSpin Orchestrate™ enable customers to profile, migrate, protect and manage server workloads between physical and virtual infrastructures in heterogeneous IT environments. Through these new enhancements, PlateSpin Workload Management is the only solution on the market today to support 32-and 64-bit Windows* and Linux* servers, as well as all leading hypervisors including Citrix* XenServer*, Microsoft* Hyper-V and Virtual Server, VMware* ESX and ESXi and Xen* integrated in SUSE® Linux Enterprise Server.

"PlateSpin Workload Management is another great example of Novell's mission to make IT work as one," said Joe Wagner, senior vice president and general manager of Systems and Resource Management at Novell. "Today's announcement strengthens our position as the leading cross-platform provider of workload management products for the mixed IT data center. Novell delivers best-in-class capabilities that empower customers to make better IT decisions, simplify and accelerate data center initiatives - such as server consolidation and disaster recovery - and reduce cost, complexity and risk."

As data centers increasingly deploy diverse hardware platforms, operating systems and virtualization technologies in heterogeneous environments, the artificial boundaries between physical and virtual machines are being erased by portable workloads -the combination of an operating system, application and data software independent from the underlying physical or virtual platform. PlateSpin Workload Management enables data center administrators to optimize the distribution of workloads to provide the best performance for users and applications across both physical and virtual machines. As a result, customers can transform their IT environment into a more efficient and resilient next-generation data center.

"IT organizations are looking for holistic management tools that can support both physical and virtual environments without requiring platform-specific point products," said Tim Grieser, IDC program vice president, Enterprise System Management Software. "Companies that focus on solutions that manage workloads across multiple hypervisors and platforms can eliminate the need for single-purpose management tools that reinforce silo-based management of data center infrastructure. The holistic approach positions companies toward end-to-end service management which helps IT organizations align with business needs and priorities."

Expanded Line of PlateSpin Workload Management Products
PlateSpin Workload Management has added key functionality that makes PlateSpin a critical component of the day-to-day operation of the next-generation data center. PlateSpin Workload Management includes the following products:

• PlateSpin Migrate: Leveraging the unique workload portability technology of PlateSpin PowerConvert®, PlateSpin Migrate decouples server workloads from their underlying hardware and enables anywhere-to-anywhere migration over the network between physical servers, virtual hosts and image archives. New features in PlateSpin Migrate include broader hypervisor and platform support and significant security, automation and scalability enhancements.
• PlateSpin Protect: Developed from PlateSpin PowerConvert, PlateSpin Protect provides whole workload protection by replicating entire workloads for flexible image back-up and hardware independent restore, as well as consolidated recovery using virtualization as a recovery platform for physical and virtual workloads. Similar to PlateSpin Migrate, new features in PlateSpin Protect include broader hypervisor and platform support and significant security, automation and scalability enhancements.
• PlateSpin Recon: PlateSpin Recon, an updated edition of PowerRecon, is a sophisticated workload profiling, analysis and planning solution that eliminates guesswork and provides data center managers with the intelligence needed to effectively manage and optimize server workloads across physical and virtual environments. New to this release are increased assessment accuracy, the ability to import resource utilization data from other monitoring tools and additional hypervisor and operating system support.
• PlateSpin Orchestrate: PlateSpin Orchestrate, the evolution of ZENworks® Orchestrator, interacts with configuration and storage resource management servers to manage the relationship between physical computer and storage resources. PlateSpin Orchestrate also manages virtual resources, controlling the entire life cycle of each virtual machine. New features in PlateSpin Orchestrate include a powerful, easy-to-use interface and expanded hypervisor and operating system support.

"Managing our enterprise data center means keeping track of large numbers of physical and virtual servers and continually monitoring them to make sure we minimize expenses and maximize resource usage, while getting the most out of our VMware Virtual environment," said Troy Szabo, Senior Systems Engineer at Nvidia Corporation. "PlateSpin's capacity planning and workload profiling takes away all the guesswork; I wouldn't be able to do my job without it."

Availability
PlateSpin Recon, PlateSpin Migrate and PlateSpin Protect are available now. PlateSpin Orchestrate will be available in the first quarter of 2009. For more information including product specifications, pricing and packaging options, contact your PlateSpin reseller or visit www.platespin.com.