Puppet Labs Doubles Node Management

Puppet Labs has released Puppet Enterprise 3.0, which the company says is a major release of its IT automation software. As with previous versions, it can be downloaded and used for free on up to 10 nodes. Serialization improvements in the core Puppet engine and the addition of a centralized storage service with PuppetDB allows enterprises to manage double the number of nodes compared with Puppet Enterprise 2.8.

Puppet Enterprise 3.0 features dynamic discovery as a core part of its orchestration engine, which is fully pluggable and can discover nodes based on Puppet classes and Facter facts. External sources providing inventory management data can be added with a plugin. Other changes include a nearly 200% improvement in agent run times, while catalog compilation time has dropped by more than 60%.

Puppet Enterprise 3.0 also has improved support for modules from the Puppet Forge with support for parameterized classes, which makes more than 1,200 modules more reusable; they can be configured directly from the Puppet Enterprise console. Puppet Enterprise now supports more platforms, including RHEL, Windows, AIX, Solaris and all the major Linux distributions.

Enterasys Updates OneFabric

Enterasys Networks is refreshing its OneFabric Data Center with four new switches and major software updates. The Siemens-owned company is updating its unified architecture for automating data center fabric a month after launching its own software-defined networking ecosystem that integrates technologies from a variety of partners through an open API and flow-based ASIC architecture.

(click image for larger view)
Enterasys

Enhancements to OneFabric include four new top-of-rack 7100-Series switches and 14 new switch modules for the S-Series Data Center/Core switches, as well as updates to its OneFabric Control Center. The two new families of S-Series modules, the S140 and S180, support dense 10-Gbit and 40-Gbit Ethernet deployments in the data center, while the new 7100-Series family of switches supports up to 64 10-Gbit Ethernet ports in a single rack unit. These new switches are aimed at high-density data center environments.

Enterasys’ OneFabric and 7100S switches are part of its SDN ecosystem and use its CoreFlow2 ASIC switching technology. CoreFlow2 includes a deep packet classification engine that enables the switches and routers to differentiate between types of traffic and what is using Port 80 to apply more granular controls for access control and quality of service.

Fluke Troubleshoots With OneTouch

Fluke Networks has updated its software for its OneTouch AT Network Assistant for troubleshooting BYOD and VoIP network issues with new capabilities to speed up problem identification and remediation. Features in Version 2 allow network technicians to isolate the root cause of end user wired and wireless problems, repair or escalate issues and validate performance and SLA compliance after any changes.

(click image for larger view)
Fluke Networks

For BYOD management, the new OneTouch software now has automated Wi-Fi discovery capabilities, including the ability to detect 802.11ac devices, and Wi-Fi packet capture. Technicians can also make use of new wired and wireless performance tests to automate measurement and assessment of end-to-end path performance, while new inline VoIP analysis tests visibility into IP phone initialization and call control processes, as well as VoIP conversation quality.

Other updates to the OneTouch AT software include a multi-port statistic test and a new path analysis test.

Silver Peak Speeds Up Clouds By The Hour

Silver Peak Systems has made its cloud-ready WAN optimization software available in hourly increments directly from Amazon Web Services. The utility licensing complements the company’s existing perpetual and annual subscription licensing options.

The Silver Peak VX software, which can be accessed through the AWS Marketplace, features the ability to increase AWS throughput by minimizing packet retransmissions due to poor network quality, increasing responsiveness by accelerating the underlying transport, and securing data whether at rest or in-transit with AES encryption. The software supports all major hypervisors.

San Disk Upgrades Software For Windows and Linux

SanDisk has updated its FlashSoft software for Windows Server and Linux operating systems with support for multiple SSDs and SSD mirroring for "safe write-back" caching. The FlashSoft 3.2 server-side solid state caching software has increased caching capability and is aimed at helping customers using software for increasingly larger data sets, the company said.

FlashSoft 3.2 supports up to four separate caches on a single server, and SanDisk has increased the maximum size of each cache from 1 TByte to 2 TBytes, while the number of volumes supported by a single cache has increased from 255 to 2,048. FlashSoft 3.2 also supports data mirroring, using two identical SSDs for "safe write-back" caching. Data is written to both SSDs concurrently, so if one SSD fails, FlashSoft automatically flushes the data from the other SSD and switches to write-through mode, providing read-only caching until the SSD failure is fixed.

FlashSoft 3.2 is available now for Windows Server 2008 R2 , Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS, Oracle Linux, versions 5.5 and above. Pricing starts at $3,000.

NEXT: New releases and updates from Sepaton, Kemp, and EMCNew Sepaton Appliance Supports Multiple Backup Apps

Sepaton has unveiled its S2100-ES3 series 2925 purpose-built backup appliance with version 7.1 software that supports a variety of popular enterprise backup applications, as well as the ability to back up and deduplicate data using Symantec NetBackup OpenStorage over Fibre Channel. Enterprises can back up NetBackup OST using 8-Gbit Fibre Channel, 1-Gbit Ethernet or 10-Gbit Ethernet protocols, in addition to the existing IP connectivity.

The company has also partnered with Gresham and qualified Gresham’s EDT v10 software with the S2100-ES3 and its version 7.1 software to allow IBM Tivoli Storage Manager customers to automate key virtual tape implementation processes. Gresham EDT enables TSM users to take advantage of Sepaton S2100-ES3 grid scalability by allowing new tape devices and media to be added to TSM without disruption to TSM operations. Sepaton also extended support for KMIP compliant enterprise key managers with qualification of SafeNet KeySecure version 6.3 EKM.

Sepaton S2100-ES3 with version 7.1 software is available now. Pricing for the S2100-ES3 Series 2925 starts at $355,000.

Kemp Gets UCS Certified

Kemp Technologies has released its LoadMaster Operating System Software (LMOS) for Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS). LMOS for UCS is Cisco Interoperability Validation Testing Certified and runs natively within the UCS fabric without requiring a server virtualization hypervisor. Cisco customers can install Kemp’s high-performance LMOS on any Cisco UCS server to improve application performance and reduce network traffic congestion. It can be installed on a B-series or C-series UCS server as a "host" ADC operating system, and because it operates natively within the UCS fabric, the LoadMaster decreases application latency and allows for high-speed communications between server workloads. It also offers Layer 4 and 7 server load balancing, SSL offload and acceleration, data caching and compression, as well as Layer 7 intrusion prevention and security features, including pre-authorization, single sign-on and persistent logging.

EMC Increases Syncplicity Security

EMC has added new features to its Syncplicity enterprise file sync and share tool to improve usability and security while providing IT departments with more control. Administrators have more visibility into file sharing with enterprise-wide password policies and expiration periods, as well as audit reporting, so they can better control content residing in unmanaged locations such as email attachments, local desktop folders and consumer cloud services.

Other administrator features in Syncplicity include federated identity management through Active Directory integration with OneLogin and Ping Identity for single sign-on and automated user provisioning. There also is support for BYOD environments through Good Dynamics MDM, which allows data to reside in a FIPS-compliant container on the mobile device while enabling IT to enforce policies such as applying application passcodes, device restrictions and file actions to an approved set of third-party apps in the Good ecosystem.

Meanwhile, end users can now send large files to internal and external recipients directly from their local machine by right clicking on a file using Syncplicity Secure Send, which generates a unique link with optional security features such as adding passwords, restricting access and tracking downloads.