Vision's Made-for-the-Blade HA Products Now Certified

Published: September 1, 2009

by Dan Burger

As you noodle the idea of how and why IBM's Blade Center S can work to your advantage, one topic you may be working through concerns virtualization and high availability. If not now, then soon. Ron Peterson, senior product strategist for Vision Solutions, points out that a virtualization strategy improves hardware resource utilization by reducing the overall system footprint and lowering energy consumption through multiplatform server consolidation. He mentions this because Vision specializes in the availability of virtualized environments.

This kind of thinking used to only take place exclusively in the high-end AS/400 shops where the loss of blood from bleeding edge technologies was better tolerated. But virtualization and high availability are no longer considered experimental or particularly risky. This goes for the small to mid size market as well. And, although the use of any or all of these technologies is far from widespread, it would seem the SMB market is headed in that direction.

IBM certainly believes these technologies have great long-term potential in AS/400 shops where it fits neatly into the Dynamic Infrastructure mindset of one box taking over the tasks of many. The JS12 BladeServer was designed specifically for small to mid size organizations that can take advantage of superior applications that not only fit specific niches (the "bank in a box," for example) but also reduce complexity. The scalability and resiliency of the hardware and operating system, plus the integrated database are all factors that favor i OS on blades. IBM expects JS12 BladeServers supporting i OS, AIX, and Linux environments to flourish in the years ahead.

To prepare for such a prospect, Vision Solutions has made sure its iTERA HA, MIMIX HA and ORION lineup of high availability products are ready for blades and the future of IT infrastructure.

Last week, Vision announced those products passed the testing and evaluation procedures that certifies they are compatible and reliable when running on BladeCenter. The tests are conducted at the IBM Innovation Centers in San Mateo, California, and Waltham, Massachusetts.

"Our software solutions were put through an extensive battery of tests in terms of compatibility and reliability on IBM's BladeCenter," said Henry Martinez, Vision Solutions' senior vice president of engineering. "Validation scenarios mirror exactly what our customers experience on a daily basis and ran as smoothly as on non-blade environments."

The Vision Solutions software was tested on Blade Center S, designed for the mid size market, using multiple IBM JS12 BladeServers that support IBM i, AIX, and Linux environments. The BladeServers also support virtualization and Dynamic Logical Partitioning (DLPAR) capabilities.

Vision Solutions' AIX products, EchoStream and EchoCluster, are already certified on blades.

"Ready for IBM Power Systems Software validation helps products stand out from the crowd while offering valuable global exposure to business partners," said IBM worldwide business development executive, Tom Lawler, in a press release. "Validation also lets customers know there is seamless integration between Vision Solutions' software and IBM Power Systems Software stacks."

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