Virtual Lab Automation Blog

VMLogix gives free licenses to Higher Ed

vmlogix — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 15:01:44 +0000

Campus Technology picked up the recent VMLogix offering of free LabManager licenses to Higher Education and Learning Institues. Read the full article at: http://campustechnology.com/articles/2009/12/03/vmlogix-gives-free-licenses-to-higher-ed.aspx

You can get all of the details of the program and submit your request at the VMLogix Education Portal: http://www.vmlogix.com/VMLogix-Virtual-Lab-Automation-Solution-for-Education-Institutes-and-Universities/%20

2010 Predictions at VMblog.com

vmlogix — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 18:56:37 +0000

David at VMblog has posted predicitons from VMLogix Founder and CTO Ravi Gururaj who thinks that 2010 will bring the growth and adoption of multiple hypervisors, and will see hybrid clouds adopted by the enterprise. Read the full article at http://vmblog.com/archive/2009/12/01/vmlogix-gazes-into-the-virtualization-and-cloud-crystal-ball-for-2010.aspx

Oct 21 VMLogix-Voke Webinar: Virtual Lab Automation Best Practices

vmlogix — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 05:08:24 +0000

Oct 21 Webinar: Virtual Lab Automation Best Practices

Take Voke’s Virtual Lab Management Survey

vmlogix — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 06:54:23 +0000

Independent analyst firm, voke, is conducting a market study on virtual lab technology. If you are using any virtual lab technology, provide your opinion in this vendor neutral survey.

Complete the survey here.

VMware Lab Manager Design Considerations – Additional Points to Bear in Mind

vmlogix — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 05:20:11 +0000

Scott Lowe’s blog carried a post on VMware Lab Manager Design Considerations written a couple of days back. As you read through the experiences and “gotchas” in that post, you probably want to bear the following in mind:

VMLogix offers a competing product (LabManager) in the virtual lab management area which users can use over private and public clouds. VMLogix is hypervisor agnostic in its virtual lab management and supports Citrix, Microsoft and VMware platforms (no vendor lock-in!). In the public clouds, you can use the VMLogix management capabilities on the Amazon public cloud. So, off the bat you have better platform support.
If you are interested in a product shoot-out, you can check our comparison of the VMLogix and VMware products here.
As you will see in the comparison table there are a few considerations listed in the VMware blog post that will no longer be “considerations” in a VMLogix deployment. For example, here are a couple (there are others like TCO etc. which I’ll not get in to here):
- In VMware LM and quoting from the blog post — “Yes, you can set up user IDs in Lab Manager but you CAN NOT create groups. Groups must be imported into the LM Server from an LDAP server.” — VMLogix LabManager does not have a dependency external LDAP systems to create LabManager users/groups
- In VMware LM and quoting from the blog post — “Lab Manager allows the user to take one (and only one!) snapshot of a configuration.” — VMLogix LabManager allows users to capture up to 10 snapshots for any VM. From a usability perspective this is useful when the VM snapshots are to be used in various test environments (vs. recreating the VMs from scratch).

So, if you’re involved in a virtual lab managment deployment – consider evaluating the VMLogix products. If you’re a University, the product is offered at no cost.

New in LabManager 3.8 – Support for Network Policies in Configurations

vmlogix — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 10:02:24 +0000

This demo movie should be self explanatory.

On the Floor at VMworld 2009 – VMLogix

vmlogix — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 08:45:15 +0000

VSM interviews Sameer Dholakia of VMLogix at VMworld 2009.

VMLogix LabManager-Cloud Edition: GA and 90 Day Free Trial

vmlogix — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 08:21:59 +0000

VMLogix released the LabManager-Cloud Edition today. Read the full press release here.

LabManagerCE is a virtual lab management solution tailored for Amazon Web Services (AWS). LabManagerCE combines all of the benefits of our award winning on-premise solution with the flexibility of cloud computing resulting in a pay-as-you-go virtual lab solution. You can learn more about the solution here.

As part of the release, VMLogix is offering LabManager-Cloud Edition at no cost for a period of 90 days from the GA date. You can learn more and sign up for the free 90 day trial here.

VMLogix LabManager 3.8

vmlogix — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 12:17:31 +0000

VMLogix has announced the general availability of LabManager version 3.8. Read the full press release here.

The new features of VMLogix LabManager 3.8 include:

Support for VMware vCenter Server 4.0 and VMware vSphere: integrating with VMware vCenter Server 4.0, LabManager supports a lab with VMware vSphere or VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3 hypervisors on the virtual hosts. The support for vCenter Server in LabManager allows administrators to benefit from platform management capabilities such as vMotion, DRS, HA and resource pools.
Updated support for Microsoft Hyper-V (Windows Server 2008 R2): extending platform support functionality, taking advantage of Hyper-V R2’s new shared cluster capability.
Network policies in configurations: allowing users to set custom firewall rules on the soft router in a configuration that allows virtual machines from within a LabManager configuration to connect to external IP addresses, outbound and inbound.
IP zones across multiple hosts: enabling IP-zoned LabManager configurations to be deployed across multiple virtual hosts.

VMLogix LabManager 3.8

Find out further details here and download the product brochure here.

Amazon Enables Bursting to the Public Cloud

vmlogix — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 10:00:28 +0000

Adopting 100% public or 100% private cloud infrastructures are two ends of a spectrum as you look at your infrastructure investments. There are considerations to bear in mind as you evaluate either option, this picture puts some of the considerations in perspective.

Private, Hybrid and Public Clouds - Cloud Bursting

Often times the best approach is a ‘hybrid one’ – where you tap your existing on-premise infrastructure for steady state demand and burst to the cloud when necessary. Amazon has launched a limited beta of the Virtual Private Cloud that aligns with what’s described in “B” above.

At VMLogix we’re excited to be supporting a public cloud such as Amazon that is rapidly innovating in this space. We will be aggressively looking at leveraging these capabilities in our LabManager-Cloud Edition which already fully supports the public Amazon cloud.