ClearCube, a Better Deal With VMware?

ClearCube, a leader in PC blades, is adding support for VMWare’s ESX3
Server. The virtualization move is part of the company’s Sentral version
5.5 being announced today, with availability slated for May.

Much as a server blade packs the key elements of a server onto a circuit
board, ClearCube includes a central processor, memory, hard drive and video
processor into a single card. A ClearCube
rack
in the datacenter houses those cards, giving IT department better
centralized management of those PC resources.

Sentral v5.5 manages mixed physical PC blades with VMware-enabled
virtual machines. The match lets ClearCube offer the benefits of
virtualization (such as centralized control and support of desktops) without
sacrificing end-user performance. The SentraIT management software is
designed to give IT organizations the exact computing power needed to
effectively conduct their jobs.

Research firm IDC estimates that most PCs only get about five percent
utilization. The ClearCube solution has the potential to raise that
considerably. “This should lower the cost of using PCs,” IDC analyst Michael
Rose, told internetnews.com. “If you can get to 20 to 25 percent
utilization with virtualization, and I think you can, that’s saving real
money. The ratio of total PCs needed (as blades in the datacenter) versus
staff is decreased with this blade solution.”

ClearCube is not in the server virtualization business, but sees virtual
desktop blade as a natural extension of that model. The idea is that
virtualized desktops gives businesses more flexibility to quickly scale out
new users and applications while preserving the traditional desktop
experience.

“In a globalized economy with an increasingly mobile workforce, this sort
of flexibility can be invaluable,” ClearCube said in a posting at the
company’s blog. “IT’s role, both now and going forward,
needs to grow beyond optimizing operations in the enterprise data center. It
has to consider users, as well – and that means virtualizing desktops.”

With its virtual abstraction layer, ClearCube Sentral v5.5 is able to
support multiple virtual machine types. Other features of Sentral v5.5
include direct interaction with VMware’s ESX3 APIs to control power on,
power off, hibernate, pause and cold start virtual machines from a single
networked location.

Sentral v5.5 identifies virtual machines without the
need for an agent in the VMware ESX3 host operating system. ClearCube said
this allows customers to create true virtual desktop solutions, managing
both physical and virtual machines together to ensure sufficient end-user
computing power availability.

“Others are saying, “Do a lot of server consolidation features and put as
many desktops in use as you can’,” Tom Josefy, director of product
management at Clearcube, told internetnews.com. “But we let you see
where the activity is so you don’t have too many users per blade. It could
be five-to-one in one area and eight-to-one in another based on job
functions. And this can all be changed and adapted at a central console with
a simple drag-and-drop interface.”

Josefy said ClearCube’s virtual pooling feature gives people a way to
know the overall processing in their infrastructure. “In some cases, they may
even find they have more capacity than they need,” he said.

ClearCube doesn’t release pricing which is done through its channel
partners. Pricing is based on a per user, per virtual machine basis.

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