News

Cassatt Ships Management Tool for Collage

• By Stuart J. Johnston
• April 19, 2006

The Collage Cross-Virtualization Manager, or XVM, automates control across virtual servers from multiple vendors, including VMware, Microsoft and Xen, according to statements published on Cassatt’s Web site this week.

“XVM gives you that control…by automating the operation, migration, and execution of VMs, as well as physical hardware,” the statement says. The new product runs on top of Cassatt’s Collage virtualization platform.

Collage uses virtualization technologies to let systems managers “pool” servers and other resources, and then automatically dole them out as needed. Virtualizing the application and its operating environment simplifies administration and hides the complexity of managing the hardware and software behind the scenes.

Cassatt shipped support for Windows servers with version 3.0 last May. That release also added the ability to let Collage manage multiple tiered applications.

Given its ability to manage multiple vendors’ VMs, one of the main target markets for Collage XVM are corporate customers seeking to consolidate servers. In addition, customers can manage their physical servers from a range of vendors including IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, and Sun Microsystems, the company says.

“Cassatt Collage XVM allows customers to automate the operations of both their physical and virtual servers while supporting their need to choose the appropriate virtualization technology for their particular infrastructure,” says Cassatt's statement.

The Cassatt products require no code changes to existing applications, middleware, or operating systems, speeding time to production deployment and reducing hardware, software, and labor costs, it adds.

XVM provides automated software deployment for both physical and virtual servers, automated responses to failures of both physical and virtual servers, and automatic scaling of applications by creating additional virtual servers on physical machines that have available CPU and memory capacity.

The Cassatt Collage Cross-Virtualization Manager (XVM), with support for VMware ESX and VMware Server is now generally available. Support for Xen will be available in June 2006. Support for Microsoft Virtual Server is planned for the second half of 2006. The XVM software costs $1,250 per physical node. Pricing for the Collage platform starts at $100,000 for a 40-node environment.

San Jose, Calif.-based Cassatt was founded in 2003 by William Coleman, former CEO of BEA Systems.