| LinMin Bare Metal Virtualization Provisioning program arrives |
Mar. 11, 2008
There are major, usually expensive, commercial virtualization programs, there are major open-source virtualization programs that require expertise to set up properly, and now, LinMin, a new Linux system management company, says there's another alternative: LBMP (LinMin Bare Metal Provisioning).
According to the company, LBMP can be used to remotely provision-that is, natively install and configure Linux and customer-specified applications-and image systems. These images can then be used for rollbacks or to clone servers, PCs, appliances and virtual machines for mass deployment.
LMBP is not open source. It is based on OCM Provision., a proprietary Linux systems management program from the now deceased company, Open Country. What LinMin claims to adds to this pre-existing program is a much easier installation and management.
The program currently supports multiple versions of Linux, such as RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) 3.0 to 5.1; SLES (SUSE Linux Enterprise Server) 9 and 10; and Ubuntu 6.06 and 6.10.
Ubuntu 7.10 and Debian 4 support are on their way. A beta edition supports Windows Server 2000 and 2003 with Windows Server 2008 support to follow sometime in the future.
"LinMin … allows corporate and departmental IT organizations, web hosting and SAAS companies, academic and research institutions, system builders, QA labs and Open-Source professionals with very limited budgets to benefit from advanced IT automation solutions," said Laurent Gharda, CEO and founder of LinMin, in a statement.
"One of the old ways of acquiring IT tools was to spend months defining requirements and evaluating products priced from $10,000 to $200,000, make a business case to the CIO and then spend weeks or months implementing the solution. The other way was for experts to assemble open-source components and customize them to work in a specific environment with considerable IT development and maintenance costs. Now you can simply buy LBMP with a credit card, expense it and become productive the same day, at a fraction of the cost," continued Gharda.
Gharda added, "LBMP is complementary to existing commercial and open-source systems management solutions that perform patch updating, monitoring, asset management and other necessary functions. What has been lacking until now is a low-priced, framework-independent bare metal provisioning solution that co-exists with other systems management tools. LBMP automates the installation and configuration of the operating system, applications and management agents, then passes control of the newly provisioned or re-purposed system to the customers' existing systems management infrastructure, be it commercially-supplied, open source or entirely manual."
If this sounds familiar, it's because this kind of product has been around for some time. What's different is the pricing level, noted Jay Lyman, an enterprise software analyst for The 451 Group.
In a Linux-Watch interview, Lyman said, "I think it's interesting to see this effort and virtualization players like VMware and Citrix increasingly broadening the target for virtualization. While today's bare metal hypervisors and LinMin may have limited capability and appeal in larger enterprises, mid-size and smaller organizations stand to benefit from the kind of server virtualization the big guys have been doing for years."
Lyman went on to say that, "This is basic server consolidation through virtualization, and while VMware's ESX 3i and Citrix XenServer OEM have appeal, LinMin presents another choice for these new virtualization customers. The ability to pay $500 for it using a credit card further demonstrates the mainstream target. LinMin will certainly have appeal in this regard and while it has fairly comprehensive support of Linux distributions, Windows provisioning is yet to come, and most of these smaller organizations are probably running some Windows. I also think there will be skepticism as this is basically a restart of Open Country, using the OCM Provision technology. LinMin has invested in making the software easier to use, and provisioning remains a top issue for sysadmins.
"However, the company re-enters a fairly crowded market and still faces the challenge of convincing sysadmins--who are usually capable of supporting and provisioning their own servers through scripting, open source tools, etc.--they should pay for third-party software," concluded Lyman.
Although LBMP is sold directly, LinMin is also looking for partners. On its site, the company states that LBMP is an "ideal solution for corporate and departmental IT organizations, Web hosting companies, VARs, system integrators, appliance builders, and OEMs because it offers both hardware-independent OS installation capability as well as cloning for the rapid deployment of complete system images to identical hardware.
"With LinMin Bare Metal Provisioning's support for stored profiles, systems builders can save all custom configurations, install customer-specific applications, and deliver a system ready to go in minutes."
LBMP is available on the Web for purchase and download. An annual subscription to LBMP costs $100 for 10 client systems, $400 for 100 client systems and $750 for 250 client systems.
Perpetual licenses are also available. There is also a 10-day trial version.
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
Do you have comments on this story?
Talkback here
NOTE: Please post your comments regarding our articles using the above link. Be sure to use this article's title as the "Subject" in your posts. Before you create a new thread, please check to see if a discussion thread is already running on the article you plan to comment on. Thanks!
(Click here for further information)
|
|
|
7 Advantages of D2D Backup
For decades, tape has been the backup medium of choice. But, now, disk-to-disk (D2D) backup is gaining in favor. Learn why you should make the move in this whitepaper.
4 Legal Reasons to Control Internet Access
The Internet is obviously a valuable resource for many organizations. However, many are exposed to legal liability concerns because they fail to control Internet access. Learn if you're safe in this white paper.
Rapidly Resolve J2EE Application Problems
Whether you are in the process of building J2EE applications or have J2EE applications already running in production, you must ensure that they deliver the expected ROI. Learn how in this white paper.
Load Testing 2.0 for Web 2.0
There are many unknowns in stress testing Web 2.0 applications. Find out how to test the performance of Web 2.0 in this white paper.
Build Better Games Online
For the game infrastructure providers, life is complex. Making money from games has become more complicated. Why? Find out in this white paper.
Building a Virtual Infrastructure from Servers to Storage
This white paper discusses the virtual storage solutions that reduce cost, increase storage utilization, and address the challenges of backing up and restoring Server environments.
Gaining Faster Wireless Connections with WiMAX
Welcome to what is quickly becoming the hyperconnected world where anything that would benefit from being connected to the network will be connected. Learn more in this white paper.
Is Your Desktop a Security Threat?
The new wave of sophisticated crimeware not only targets specific companies, but also targets desktops and laptops as backdoor entryways into those business’ operations and resources. Learn how to stay safe in this white paper.
Increasing SAN Reliability by 100 Percent
Storage area networks (SAN) are a strong part of storage plans. Learn how to increase your reliability and uptime by 100 percent in this case study.
|
|
|
|
|
news feed