VMLogix LabManager-Cloud Edition is a virtual lab management system (currently in beta) that works on public clouds (Amazon). See how easy it is for your users to access Linux and Windows instances in the Amazon cloud through the browser (no elaborate key exchanges etc.)!

LabManager-Cloud Edition provides several other capabilities like user management, multi-AMI management, user quotas, policies and leases, powerful automation, sharing and collaboration etc. You can unleash the Amazon cloud on your enterprise with this management capability.

• Enabling Self Service over the Public Cloud
• Unleash Amazon EC2 on Your Business Users through a Policy Governed Self Service Environment

I was reading this post by Ken Hess – My Midsummer Night’s Dream of A Virtual Lab. In the past, I’ve written about how virtual lab management software can help if you’re considering a virtual lab setup for your customer’s software trials and evaluations. If you’re considering a virtual lab for software trials, check out VMLogix LabManager or LabManager-Cloud Edition.

Here are some relevant points that the author makes:

To give fair assessments of vendor products, I need complete and fully functional copies of those products. Vendors who do supply me with their products never supply the required hardware to go along with them. Often the hardware requirements are very high thus making my use of the product almost impossible. A virtual lab is the only logical answer.

Instead of confusion and frustration, they’ll [customers, VARs, technical writers] experience your software the way you want them to: The correct hardware, the correct installation, the correct first impression.

Don’t assume success, guarantee it by providing those prospective customers with something that will surely close the deal for you: A virtual lab.

A virtual lab is my dream and my hope is that vendors will decide that it’s a good idea and implement it.

I completely agree – there is tremendous value in getting your customer/prospect up and running with your trial software with minimum obstacles and hoops to cross through. After all you want them to get to your product as quickly as possible and spend the time tinkering with the software (vs. spending cycles in waiting for required hardware etc.).

That’s where cloud computing makes a significant difference! Take our newly launched LabManager-Cloud Edition beta – you can get yourself setup with a trial version easily - no need of waiting/procuring hardware, installing software etc. etc. Just spend your time on — well, evaluating and trying out the trial software! (you’ll need an Amazon Web Services account, last I checked it did not take more than a couple of minutes to sign up for one!).

You could also use LabManager-Cloud Edition to power your virtual lab for software trials in the cloud!

Anyone looking at the public cloud as infrastructure for their virtual lab recognizes that policy governed self service is a critical requirement. Possibly the most important requirement. There are others too, a critical set of which our new LabManager-Cloud Edition handles. Check out the graphic below to get a birds eye view of the management capabilities.

LabManager-Cloud Edition (Early version) Management Capabilities

Since self service is critical, I figured I’d share a brief video of how the experience is for your end user while working with the LabManager-Cloud Edition to self serve their requirements on the public cloud (Amazon). If you’d like, you can request for a free trial on our website.

You might want to read this article if you’re looking at adopting virtualization in your enterprise – Five Virtualization Best Practices that Can Transform Enterprise IT.

Here is a lightning talk that Jim Singh delivered at the Sun Cloud conference.

Watch the 5 minute talk here.

He talks about dev and test and virtual labs being a good use case for public cloud adoption – if you subscribe to that view as well, you should check out our new beta available now – LabManager – Cloud Edition on Amazon’s EC2.

Learn about private clouds and the rationale for tapping into the public cloud for the “spike” demands (i.e., where you don’t plan and install capacity for the peak demand).

Get your free beta trial of LabManager-Cloud Edition for the Amazon public cloud. Alternatively, if you’re interested in running on-premise, get a free trial of our latest LabManager product.

Today is a very exciting day for us at VMLogix!

We’re thrilled to be announcing LabManager-Cloud Edition which takes our award winning virtual lab management capabilities to the public cloud. LabManager-Cloud Edition allows users to leverage Amazon Web Services (Amazon EC2 and S3) compute and storage for your virtual lab infrastructure requirements. You now have a true pay as you go virtual lab solution that allows you to:

• Get started on your virtual lab project right away! No more waiting for the infrastructure, compute, storage etc. and purchase approvals from many departments
• Unleash Amazon EC2 on your business users through a policy governed self service environment (multiple users and teams can access the same EC2 infrastructure through the same underlying AWS account – each of the users and teams can be policy, quota and lease driven – isn’t that nice?)

Key Features of the Beta Release Include:

• Creation and management of multi-machine configurations: enabling the combination of multiple Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) into a single environment and providing capabilities to entirely automate the deployment and re-deployment of multi-machine environments (including software stack customizations) in a self-service fashion;
• Full virtual lab tool capabilities: tapping into powerful virtual lab management capabilities including user/team management, license management and lease management, and enabling users/teams to share/collaborate with lab artifacts, audit trails and access to a centralized repository of software media;
• On-demand access to virtual lab resources: allowing for immediate access to computing infrastructure resources over the web from any location; and,
• Pay-for-what-you-use pricing model: leveraging the elasticity of the cloud allows customers to reduce up front capital expenditures by instantly scaling up or scaling down the lab infrastructure when required, and only paying for what is used.

VMLogix is the only vendor in the market to offer users the flexibility to run their virtual lab on private infrastructure (while enabling private clouds) or on public infrastructure (while leveraging public clouds).

VMLogix management solutions help manage and bridge private and public clouds

Get Started on the LabManager-Cloud Edition Beta Program Right Now!

You can sign up for our LabManager-Cloud Edition beta program on our website.

Resources Related to the Beta

• LM-Cloud Edition FAQ
• LM-Cloud Edition Home Page
• VMLogix cloud computing whitepaper

Demo Movie

Here is a demo movie that shows the LabManager-Cloud Edition in action.

Stay tuned, over the next few days I’ll talk more about the solution. In the meantime, go get your hands on the beta!

VMLogix is continually innovating and developing features and functionality to create the next generation of virtual machine management software. I’ve captured a set of functionality that we are developing as part of VMLogix LabManager to give you a sneak preview of what’s coming in the next few months. Take a look at:

• What’s coming in LabManager 2H09
• LabManager in action video

Both of these are secure artifacts on our website and you will need to register on our site prior to getting access to these.

As you look through these planned features, you will find that:

• VMLogix continues in its efforts to support the best in class, most flexible and lowest TCO virtual lab management solution in the market
• VMLogix continues in its effort to support a hypervisor neutral virtual lab management solution in the market
• VMLogix continues in its effort to develop and innovate on virtual lab management product functionality

Any questions, do drop us a note. Once you have taken a look at these features, if you would like to schedule an early demonstration, don’t hesitate to drop us a note! You can contact us at sales@vmlogix.com.

Combined with our recent foray to develop a virtual lab solution on the public cloud, VMLogix continues to stay ahead in the virtual lab management game.

As part of the VMLogix education program, Universities and education institutes worldwide can now get access to a free copy of the award winning VMLogix LabManager solution.

VMLogix LabManager is a powerful virtual lab management solution that enables IT administrators to use any of the leading virtualization platforms to consolidate virtual lab infrastructures and enables end users (i.e., students) to gain access to lab infrastructure in a policy controlled, automated and self service manner. You can refer to the case studies to learn more about the uses of VMLogix LabManager specifically in development/test labs and training labs.

What Universities Get

• VMLogix LabManager license at no cost (enabled for 1 year) for the latest GA release of VMLogix LabManager. There will be no cap on the number of managed hosts.
• A waiver of the support and maintenance fees for the first year. Complementary access to VMLogix product support for the first year (access to limited support will only be provided).
• As part of this program, VMLogix LabManager can be used to manage hosts running VMware (ESX) or Microsoft (Hyper-V) virtualization technologies.

VMLogix does require that the University representative commit to serve as a reference customer.

How to Request a Free Copy for Your University

1. You/an appropriate representative from the University should contact VMLogix sales (sales@vmlogix.com ) to request for a free license. The email needs to come from a valid university email address (.edu for instance)
2. VMLogix sales will respond with instructions on how to download the product bits (along with a deployment guide and other product documentation) and with a license key for the software

If you have any further questions, do contact us at – info@vmlogix.com

Make Your Request Now – This offer is open only for a limited number of participating Universities!

A Subset of VMLogix LabManager use cases for the software demo virtual lab scenario

Also see the previous post for the use cases for lab administrators.