Virsto One v1.2 Intimate with System Center, Hyper-V
Virsto Software is growing up, but not without a certain amount of discomfort. Some customers are happier than others. Kudos and criticism go hand in hand. According to CEO Mark Davis, however, since the company launched last Februrary and made its flagship product Virsto 1 generally available in March, it has added "real paying customers" who like what they've seen, but want more--specifically in the realm of Microsoft's System Center suite.
Virsto responded to that demand by bulking up on its Microsoft offerings big time. Most notably, it joined the System Center Alliance, an online community to help technology partners work more easily with System Center products and create a strong partner ecosystem around them. A strong Microsoft ecosystem is a powerful thing--just ask VMware.
So now as a result of its work with the SC Alliance, the company's new release, Virsto One v1.2 (v1.1 slipped by under the covers without any fanfare) will offer advanced support for Microsoft datacenter and infrastructure solutions, including Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V R2 and System Center.
v1.2 also supports Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager 2010, Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 and Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS). In addition, Virsto "complements the recently announced Hyper-V Dynamic Memory feature in Windows Server 2008 R2 service pack 1, which enables greater virtual machine density by optimizing available memory for servers and desktop virtualization deployments."
In other words, Virsto--which claims it can reduce VM storage consumption and triple I/O performance--has plopped itself down squarely in the up-and-coming sweet spot that is Hyper-V.
Davis certainly thinks it's up and coming, saying six months ago you couldn't find a Hyper-V installation, and now they're turning up everywhere. "A couple of years ago, VMware thought they would be in a monopoly forever," he notes. Regarding closer ties with Microsoft and the benefits of the SC Alliance, he adds, "We really do get help out of them. Perception does matter and the help we have gotten from Microsoft has helped legitimize us."
Next on the agenda: Working with customers, resellers and Citrix to help reduce the dampening effect expensive storage has on potential VDI customers.
Now available, Virsto One v1.2 is priced on a per-server socket basis. Hyper-V users may download a free 30-day evaluation from www/virsto.com/try
Posted by Bruce Hoard on 09/15/2010 at 12:48 PM