Novell PlateSpin Migrate really moves Solaris workloads

Novell introduced me to the features of the newest release of PlateSpin Migrate the other day. If you'll recall, I've offered a number of posts on Novell's PlateSpin unit. The most recent of these is Novell PlateSpin Recon 3.6. Novell appears to be one of the few suppliers that offer management tools for virtualized environments that understands that virtual machine software is not the answer to every question. Operating system virtualization/partitioning software, such as that found in Oracle/Sun's Solaris, is often a better choice when all of the workloads are hosted by a single operating system.

Here's what Novell has to say about PlateSpin Migrate

PlateSpin Migrate is a powerful workload portability and migration solution from Novell that migrates server workloads over the network between physical servers, virtual hosts and image archives. PlateSpin Migrate remotely decouples workloads from the underlying server hardware and streams them to and from any physical or virtual host – all from a single point of control. With the broadest multiplatform support for hypervisors and operating systems, PlateSpin Migrate provides organizations with a mature, proven solution for testing, migrating and rebalancing workloads across infrastructure boundaries from desktop to data center.

Broad Multiplatform Support

PlateSpin Migrate provides the most comprehensive multiplatform support for mixed IT environments, enabling enterprises to easily manage, optimize and protect all workloads in the data center. With broad support for Windows and Linux, as well as leading server hardware and hypervisor technologies, PlateSpin Migrate enables enterprises to move and copy data, applications and operating systems across infrastructure boundaries to make physical and virtual environments work as one.

Enterprise-Ready Workload Migration

Successful virtualization initiatives require upfront planning and enterprise-ready solutions that automate the planning, testing and migration of server workloads. With unmatched migration speed and reliability to accommodate the world’s largest enterprise data centers, PlateSpin Migrate provides a true enterprise-ready solution for migrating and optimizing workloads. Designed to handle the real-world complexities of mixed IT environments, PlateSpin Migrate helps enterprises cross physical and virtual boundaries and avoid downtime and risk.

Live Testing and Server Sync™

Reduce the risks associated with workload relocation projects like server consolidation and data center relocation. Perform an initial transfer to the target site or host, test the workload in the new location while continuing to run the source, and then perform a final sync before cutting over the workload. Server Sync also helps when the source and destination are geographically distributed. Removing the necessity for a full system replication can dramatically accelerate workload migrations over the wide area network.

Snapshot analysis

• increasing application performance
• increasing application scalability
• increasing workload agility or mobility
• making the overall environment meet service level objectives
• increasing availability and reliability
• creating a unifed management and security domain
• optimizing the use of server or client hardware resources

Those focused in increasing system utilization often then turn to workload agility or mobility in the hopes of making their workloads meet service level objectives and increasing overall workload availability. This goal, of course, means that workloads must become agile or mobile and have the ability to move from one system to another under control of an orchestration or automation manager.

This also means that a supplier must offer ways to find virtual resources, transform them from one format to another as the initial step in making the workload "movable." Novell's PlateSpin has a very good reputation in this very area.

This release is focused on bringing workloads into and out of a virtualized operating system environment as well as continuing to handle a simlar task for virtual machine environments.

This release should be of great interest to Oracle/Sun Solaris users.