Software facilitates data center management.
Press Release Summary:
Suited for companies with heterogeneous virtual/physical server environments, CommandCenter Secure Gateway® v4.0 provides consolidated discovery, access, control, power management, and auditing capabilities. Real-time IT infrastructure views keep tabs on migration of data between machines, and unified dashboard screen lets users view, organize, and manage IT assets. Accessed by logging onto one IP address, solution securely handles all authorization, auditing, and session handoffs.
Original Press Release:
Raritan Simplifies Virtualization and Power Management with New Data Center Management Software
- New software release of Raritan's CommandCenter Secure Gateway reduces the cost and complexity of managing data centers deploying virtualization technologies -
SOMERSET, N.J., Sept. 3 -- To help companies with a mix of virtual and physical servers, Raritan today introduced new capabilities to its leading data center management software.
Best known for simplifying the management of heterogeneous IT environments through a unified portal, the new release of CommandCenter Secure Gateway(R) (CC-SG) provides consolidated discovery, access and control, power management and auditing of all elements of an IT infrastructure -- including virtual servers, physical servers, networking equipment, and power devices.
To deliver accurate, real-time IT infrastructure views, CC-SG 4.0 keeps tabs on the migration of data between virtual and physical machines. From a single dashboard screen, users can view all IT assets, organize them in logical views of their choosing, and launch the best remote access and management tool for the job, including third-party tools. Accessed by logging onto a single IP address, CC-SG eliminates time-consuming multiple logins and the need to open multiple interfaces in order to reach a specific server or group of servers.
Streamlining Management for a Virtual World
Virtualization software -- which migrates applications from multiple, underutilized servers to fewer optimized physical servers -- is gaining ground in data centers around the world because of its success in reducing hardware costs and related expenses, such as rack space, network ports and power. However, the fluidity of moving applications among servers has added extra management complexity -- from how best to access servers to security and authorization.
In fact, managing a virtual server may require several management tools. For example, virtualization host servers (hypervisors) may require out-of-band tools to access the physical server, as well as in-band and virtualization tools relevant to the hypervisor and virtual machines.
"The growing coexistence of virtual and physical servers adds new layers of complexity to IT management," said Henry Hsu, Raritan's Director of Enterprise Products. "Tools, such as VMware's VirtualCenter, do a great job of providing a single point of access to all VMware access methods. But, they only provide a partial view of the data center. Each server layer could potentially employ a different access tool -- with different authorization, audit, and administration layers. Instead of doubling or tripling the number of tools and adding extra complexity to data center administration, Raritan has developed a single consolidated management portal to simplify things. We view a virtual machine as one more item in the IT infrastructure that CommandCenter Secure Gateway can manage."
When virtual machines are moved from one hypervisor to another, CC-SG keeps tabs and synchronizes automatically in order to deliver real-time views of physical and virtual machines. In addition, remote access methods of choice can be launched from the CC-SG portal, including: remote control software -- such as Windows Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), Windows Terminal Server, Secure Shell (SSH) and Virtual Network Computing (VNC); out-of-band console hardware (KVM switches and serial console servers), if BIOS access is required; as well as vendor-proprietary management controllers (HP iLO/iLO2, IBM RSA, Dell DRAC and IPMI).
"In effect, the new release of CC-SG provides a unified access portal to every layer of every server type, whether physical or virtual," said Hsu. "Customers can easily add their VMware environment to CC-SG to obtain console and power operations to virtual machines, ESX host servers, and regular physical servers from one point of access and control."
CC-SG securely handles all authorization, auditing and session handoffs. CC-SG authenticates users, audits access and collects events and alerts from both types of servers in a single interface for easier access, control and rights management. CC-SG's Virtualization Manager enables bulk configuration of username/password or service accounts to provide automatic sign-on to Virtual Machines -- saving lots of setup and configuration time.
New capabilities to the CC-SG software include: improved auto-discovery of servers and network devices by extending the capability to virtualized infrastructures; logging and reporting to include events from virtualized environments; ability to view and access multiple virtual centers from a single console; topology view of the virtualization environment with ability to single click a desired access method to any server -- virtual or physical; virtual power command buttons supporting VMware capabilities, such as 'Suspending' virtual machines; and access to server power information.
Intelligent Power Management over IP
The upgraded CC-SG management software also helps with power management. Secure outlet-level power control of intelligent PDUs, such as Raritan's Dominion(R) PX, can be done directly on an IP network from the CC-SG portal -- eliminating a middle management layer required by other solutions. CC-SG automatically identifies how many outlets are available on the PDU, firmware version, and serial number. From the CC-SG portal, a server's power can be turned on and off or cycled.
For more granular power information, the Dominion PX provides real-time intelligence on power usage for each server plugged into the PDU -- which comes in handy when trying to identify underutilized or idle servers as candidates for virtualization. "Savings on server power consumption is one of the key benefits of virtualization," said Hsu. "Identifying and consolidating multiple low-load systems into one server is helping to reduce power and cooling demands."
Pricing and Availability
CC-SG 4.0 is available to download starting today. The firmware upgrade is available to all existing CC-SG E1 and V1 customers as a free upgrade to their existing product.
No special virtualization license or activation fee is required -- a virtual machine, ESX server, and Virtual Centers are all nodes and, therefore, can be added to CC-SG without any setup restriction. CC-SG currently supports VMware, and is designed to support other virtualization software in the future.
More related information -- including a white paper on best practices for managing physical and virtual servers in data centers -- is available at www.raritan.com/virtualization .
About Raritan (Raritan.com)
Raritan is a leading provider of secure IT infrastructure management solutions that provide IT directors, managers and administrators the control they need to optimize data center productivity, enhance branch office operations and increase overall power management efficiency. In more than 50,000 locations around the world, our integrated secure in-band and out-of-band server access, control and power management products help companies better monitor and manage server access, utilization and energy consumption. Raritan's OEM division provides advanced embedded hardware and firmware for server and client management including KVM-over-IP, IPMI, intelligent power management and other industry standards-based management applications. Based in Somerset, N.J., Raritan has 38 offices worldwide, serving 76 countries. For more information, please visit Raritan.com
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CONTACT: The Harbor Group for Raritan, +1-978-526-1601, PR@theHarborGroup.com
