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The latest update to HiveIOs intelligent virtualization solution adds data protection for virtual machines, BI support and disaster recovery by seamlessly integrating with cloud storage. IDN looks at Hive Fabric 8.0.

by Tom Donoghue

Tags: BI, cloud HiveIO, virtualization,

The latest update to HiveIOs intelligent virtualization solution aims to deliver robust disaster recovery that lets customers replicate their VMs and user data to cloud-based storage.

Hive Fabric 8.0 is the latest upgrade to HiveIOs hardware-agnostic virtualization software to simplifies the deployment and management of virtual desktops, virtual servers, and software-defined storage. With a collection of integrated technologies, including accelerated computing and local storage, HiveIO allows IT generalists to design and build a highly scalable virtual infrastructure.

"With 8.0, we deliver a powerful disaster recovery solution capable of replicating VMs and user data to cloud-based storage such as Amazon S3, providing even more flexibility to our customers, said Toby Coleridge, HiveIOs vice president of product in a statement. End users also drove several updates for Hive Fabric 8.0, he added, including support for business insights and automation.

Hive Fabric 8.0 also incorporates BI tools into Hive Sense to provide valuable insight into applications and resource utilization. Its new capabilities include added data protection, backup to the cloud, application insights, an updated user interface, and more features for its

Hive Sense platform for visibility and business insights.

Hive Fabric technology offers an end-to-end virtualization solution, including several vital features -- hypervisor, remote monitoring, management, VDI provisioning, broker, as well as storage acceleration.

Hive Sense provides visibility into a companys IT infrastructure. This allows admins to monitor how various applications are being used, as well as utilize that data to analyze their application environment for license inefficiencies (via IT Asset Management reporting) -- without additional third-party products. One popular use case is to let customers track how many licenses are being used for a specific application, leading to potential savings in overall licensing costs, the company noted.

Among some of the notable new features in Hive Fabric 8.0 are:

Data Protection:In the event of a disaster, Hive Fabric 8.0 provides customers with the ability to back up their storage locally or to a cloud provider platform, such as Amazon AWS or Microsoft Azure. Integrating with cloud-based storage provides organizations with a new level of agility and time saved on data protection.

User Interface:HiveIO analyzed how current users operated their Hive Fabric user interface (UI) to launch an updated version in 8.0. To further improve the end-user admin experience, operations have been increasingly simplified and real-time information and virtual desktop insights appear in the admin's dashboard.

Expanded AI:Hive Fabric 8.0 also build upon the artificial intelligence-ready solution that enables organizations to deploy virtualization technology without unnecessary vendor complexity or the need for costly specialists.

Hive Fabric also enables users to deploy virtual desktops, virtual servers, and software-defined storage in a single install, which eliminates the need for a multi-vendor and multi-contract approach.

In specific, the Hive Fabric virtualization platform sports a set of fabric cluster services that aim to simplify the deployment and management of virtual desktops, virtual servers, and software-defined storage. The architecture uses a KVM kernel alongside an intelligent message bus, which together can deliver a complete end-to-end VDI solution.

Directly out-of-the-box, Hive Fabric provides several critical services for virtualized resources, including hypervisor, remote monitoring and management, desktop broker, gateway, and storage acceleration services. The benefit of such an architecture is that Hive does not require any added appliances, systems, layers of security.

An early adopter of Hive, Solihull College & University Centre, credited the platform with delivering simplicity and cost-efficiency.

The UK-based organizations IT Director Dave Gartside said in a statement, "Moving our virtual server and desktop environment from VMware to Hive Fabric dramatically simplifies the administration for our IT team. The single web-based interface allows us to gain insight into how our users work and what applications they are running. We are especially excited to see the integration with cloud storage, which provides us with more agility and a cost-effective solution for Disaster Recovery."

Hive is a hardware-agnostic bare metal install that works on any X86 server.

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HiveIO Adds Data Protection, BI, Cloud Storage to Its Intelligent Virtualization Solution - Integration Developers