Platespin: First-to-Market with Continuous Server Consolidation Suite

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by || 05/23/2006

TORONTO – PlateSpin today announced the general availability of the Consolidation Planning Module for PlateSpin PowerRecon, a completely automated analysis engine which determines optimal fit between application workloads and server resources. The Consolidation Planning Module takes hardware, software and performance information gathered by PlateSpin PowerRecon, and automatically recommends an optimal allocation of servers to the most appropriate virtual hosts such as VMware ESX Server, VMware Server, or Microsoft Virtual Server. It uniquely uses CPU, disk, network, memory and time to determine the proper distribution of servers to a set of virtual hosts. With the click of a mouse, data center managers can quickly and easily determine where to consolidate servers to minimize hardware, while maximizing application performance.

“Deciding on how to consolidate servers without proper analysis, optimization and what-if modeling tools is far from easy” said John Stetic, PlateSpin Director of Product Management. “By using PowerRecon with the Consolidation Planning Module and PowerConvert, our customers can significantly accelerate their time to value and maximize their return on investment with virtualization.”

The Consolidation Planning Module expands the capabilities of PlateSpin PowerRecon with the following features:

  • Automatically analyzes the five critical dimensions of workload: CPU, Disk, Memory, Network, and Time across hundreds of servers simultaneously
  • Target server templates allow users to input virtual host server characteristics of their preferred makes and models prior to purchasing them
  • Modeling of virtual host utilization and allocation of VMs to those hosts
  • Time-based analysis to stagger multiple workloads evenly across virtual hosts
  • Automatically determines number of host servers required as target for a given set of physical servers to consolidate
  • Analysis support for both Windows and Linux servers

The Consolidation Planning Module is the first in a series of licensable modules that will be offered with PlateSpin PowerRecon to optimize the use of servers in the data center. This first module will enable data centers to perform continuous server consolidation by allowing data center managers to quickly and easily assess their optimization levels at any time. When combined with PlateSpin PowerConvert to automate migrating server workloads to the destinations recommended by PowerRecon, the combined product suite provides the industry’s most automated end-to-end software solution for continuously optimizing the data center.

“We’re extremely excited about the Consolidation Planning Module for PowerRecon,” said Raymond McDonald, Systems Engineer of Expert Server Group. “Not only has PlateSpin made it easy and efficient to collect workload and resource information across the data center, it has provided a means for our customers to perform server consolidation and data center optimization with the click of the mouse, at any time.”

“We like PlateSpin’s approach to keeping the data center in an optimized state by making it easy to continuously analyze and stream servers to where they fit most.” Said Matthew Legg, Senior VMware Consultant of Technical Architecture Solutions Pty Ltd. “Through PlateSpin’s software, we’re no longer treating server consolidation projects as one-time events. We will use PlateSpin software to continuously adapt to changing business and IT conditions.”

The Consolidation Planning Module is available for purchase immediately. Existing customers with maintenance agreements can download the update from the web site at any time. Customers who buy PowerRecon before the end of June 30, will receive this new module for free. For detailed pricing and licensing options, please contact a PlateSpin reseller (http://www.platespin.com/partners) or contact PlateSpin directly at 416.203.6565, or send an email to [email protected].

About PlateSpin

PlateSpin provides the most advanced data center automation software designed to optimize the use of server resources across the enterprise to improve business service levels and lower costs. PlateSpin OS Portability technology liberates software from hardware platforms allowing servers to be streamed over the enterprise network from any source to any destination, ensuring best fit between server resource supply and application workload demands. Global 2000 companies use PlateSpin solutions to lower costs and solve today’s most pressing data center initiatives such as server consolidation, disaster recovery, hardware migration and test lab automation. Winner of the 2006 International Business Award for Best Overall Company, PlateSpin was also named the fourth fastest growing IT company in Canada by Branham Group, and as one of the top five Movers and Shakers in the Canadian IT Sector for 2006. For more information please visit www.platespin.com.