Features - Storage Innovations:

PlateSpin TECH CONVERTS SERVERS BETWEEN PHYSICAL, VIRTUAL

PlateSpin Ltd, a leading developer of solutions that bring flexibility and automation to the data center, announced the availability of PlateSpin PowerP2V, the next-generation platform for converting servers between physical and virtual machine architectures. The new platform allows data centers to dramatically accelerate their physical to virtual server consolidation programs by eliminating manual tasks and reducing human error through automation.

PlateSpin PowerP2V brings increased scalability, flexibility, and extensibility to PlateSpin's virtual automation technologies. It makes conversions between physical servers and VMware virtual machines quick and easy by offering a completely unattended conversion model that can scale to hundreds or even thousands of servers. The main features of the new PowerP2V platform include:

• Non-Invasive Discovery of Server Networks -- PowerP2V offers complete auto discovery of physical and virtual machine servers, their hardware configuration profiles, and their application profiles without the need to manually install software agents. This enables users that are performing migrations to see a 360 degree view of all their available hardware assets instantly. PowerP2V does not require manual installation of agents at any point in the conversion cycle, eliminating human effort substantially, and removing the risk agent software installation often entails.
• Dynamic Virtual Machine Configuration -- PowerP2V allows users to make detailed changes to the destination configuration prior to the conversion cycle, such as CPU, disk mapping, memory, and network resources, from a single PowerP2V console from any machine in the network. PowerP2V also handles SMP conversions so that you can scale up or down the configuration during the conversion process.
• Support for Linux and Windows -- PowerP2V is the first solution to allow the conversion of physical Linux machines to virtual machines in addition to MS Windows 2003/2000/NT support.
• Virtual to Virtual Conversion -- In addition to its robust P2V capabilities, PowerP2V has the ability to perform conversions from virtual machine to virtual machine (V2V) which can help with upgrading from older to newer VM versions or between different virtualization technologies.
• Extensive driver support -- PowerP2V offers a wide array of support for data center hardware configurations including mass storage devices. New drivers that are released from hardware vendors can be supported by PowerP2V quickly and easily.
• Enhanced user interface -- PowerP2V provides exclusive "drag-and-drop" functionality through its graphical user interface. Users can discover, deploy, and configure virtual machines anywhere on the network and track each conversion based on granular details during each step of the conversion process.
• Open Application Programming Interface -- PowerP2V offers a comprehensive application programming interface (API) for customized integration with third party applications. The API enables third party applications to monitor and trigger tasks within the PowerP2V engine and enables OEM providers to integrate PlateSpin's conversion technology into their own product offerings.

"Combined with PlateSpin's award winning Operation Control Center (POMC), the only solution for managing bare metal and virtual machines in a single console, PowerP2V complements POMC with an extremely scalable, fully automated conversion solution for data centers of all sizes." said Stephen Pollack, CEO of PlateSpin Ltd. "The new architecture of PowerP2V will allow PlateSpin to develop new automation products to market in an accelerated manner, and provides the underlying groundwork for integrating autonomic business service management solutions into our product lines".

"PlateSpin has brought to market the industry's most powerful and user-friendly P2V conversion tool for VMware ESX servers. Their PowerP2V product raises the bar on performance, flexibility and automation of physical to virtual server conversions. As a result, it has greatly enhanced our ability to provide a server consolidation practice to our VMware customer base." said Omar Yakar, president and CEO of Agile360.

"VMware is committed to growing relationships with partners such as PlateSpin that help our joint customers reap the flexibility, availability and cost advantages of virtual infrastructure," said Brian Byun, senior director of alliances at VMware. "PlateSpin software helps our customers accelerate their adoption of VMware in their enterprise."