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ClearCube Unveils Version 5.6 of Sentral™ VDI Management System

The Industry’s Only Virtual Desktop Connection Broker to Provide a Comprehensive Management Framework for Both Physical and Virtualized Desktop Computing Environments, A Complete Solution to Meet Any User Need

London––January 23, 2008––ClearCube Technology, the market leader in centralized computing solutions, today announced general availability of version 5.6 of Sentral™, its VDI Management System, the industry’s only complete, vendor-agnostic connection broker software to deploy and manage both physical and virtualized desktops for high-performance centralized desktop computing in heterogeneous enterprise IT environments. Sentral accommodates both power users who need the performance of a dedicated PC as well as knowledge or task workers that can be deployed within a VDI framework. Sentral offers IT administrators a single management framework to monitor and control their entire centralized infrastructure of computing assets and user types, dramatically reducing complexity, and ensuring the security, manageability and availability of VDI deployments.

Built on five generations of proven success within enterprise production environments, ClearCube’s Sentral v5.6 delivers the enterprise-class capabilities required for traditional centralized desktop computing as well as virtual desktop management in one solution, including: connection brokering, virtual machine management, thin client management, dynamic resource allocation, load balancing, active health and monitoring, disaster recovery and support for a wide variety of back-end hardware and user access devices. Sentral v5.6 is the only virtual desktop solution to manage both the physical and virtual resources within heterogeneous environments, providing cross-platform support and giving customers the flexibility to deploy the right solution for the right user type, utilize any back-end hardware, end-point user access device or virtualization technology for desktop virtualization.

This latest version integrates support for ClearCube’s break-through I9420 I/Port and the C7420 Fiber C/Port devices, enabling superior graphics performance, unlimited distance capabilities via PCoIP, enhanced USB peripheral support, and support for the Intel® vPro™-enabled systems. Providing robust scalability, reliability and performance, Sentral v5.6 is now fully packaged, licensed and available for purchase for virtual desktop management independent of ClearCube hardware. 

“We have a complex environment requiring a centralized desktop computing solution that could provide 1:1 computing for our high-end power users while providing the management capabilities for our virtualized desktop environments,” said Guy Fuller, Director of Information Technology at Northwestern Memorial Physicians Group. “Moreover, we needed a solution that could provide forward support for multiple virtualization technologies as well as integration with our traditional systems management applications. Sentral offered a single management console that could do it all, giving us utmost manageability, flexibility and control.”

“Virtualization technology is garnering a great deal of attention and has become part of the IT strategy of most companies,” said Dan Kusnetzky, president and principal analyst of the Kusnetzky Group. “ClearCube has been an important player in several segments of the virtualization technology market and has helped many organizations implement their virtual desktop strategy. By making Sentral hardware-agnostic, as well as enhancing the product in several important ways, ClearCube is now in the position to extend that help to many other organizations.”

“Today’s enterprise requires solutions that can meet the many needs of a typical IT environment where different types of solutions are required for different types of users,” said Rick Hoffman, president and CEO of ClearCube. “Desktop virtualization now offers another layer of complexity to the IT manager. As the pioneer of centralized desktop computing solutions with more than a decade of delivering its high performance solution, ClearCube offers its expertise to companies who want to deliver virtual desktops to the end user.”

The Most Comprehensive Solution for Virtual Desktop Deployment and Management

Key Benefits include:

• Proven Technology: One of the most sophisticated connection brokering and virtual machine lifecycle management solutions in the industry, Sentral builds on five generations in production environments to provide unique connection brokering features, including switching, sparing, load balancing as well as support for 1:1 and 1:many connection models. Delivered through its Virtualization Module, Sentral’s VM lifecycle management features VM pooling and automated hibernation. The Dynamic Allocation Module manages all of the connection brokering tasks through static or dynamic mappings of users and devices to blades and virtual machines based on availability and utilization.
• A One Stop Shop: A single management console for virtual desktop and centralized computing management, Sentral provides a single management framework for centralized computing infrastructures. Beyond its connection broker and VM management functionality, Sentral provides system management features such as out-of- band management with support for vPro™ technology through Intel AMT, inventory, health, alerting, reporting, remote control, failover, software updates, thin client management, security and other features required in an enterprise environment. Sentral’s dashboard keeps an IT manager informed of the status of their environment at a glance by monitoring and reporting on desktops, virtual machines, PC Blades or server hardware, thin clients, and hypervisor hosts, such as ESX servers.  To allow the administrator deeper control, Sentral provides custom alerts, detailed audit reports, and user session logs to give advanced health and usage information.
• A Complete Solution:  Sentral provides a centralized desktop computing solution for all kinds of desktop users from power users needing access to a high quality, quad-monitor video experience, all the way down to task workers hosted on a server with 20 other virtualized users.
• No Vendor Lock-down: Sentral provides cross-platform support for hardware from all leading vendors and also provides vendor-agnostic support for multiple virtualization technologies, ensuring the utmost flexibility for a heterogeneous IT environment requiring integration with existing technology investments.
Key Features include:

Connection Brokering
• Software based, administrator configurable, load balancing
• Policy-based management of connection requests
• User or device-based mapping to blades or virtual machines with configurable administrator over-rides.
• Active Directory Integration for user-based mapping
• Multi-database support, including Microsoft SQL and MySQL® (recently acquired by Sun®)
• Variety of connection types:
- RDP for off-the-shelf thin clients
- Wyse® V10L and V90L (TCX Protocol)
- PCoIP™ for I9400 series products
- TDX Protocol-based thin clients

Virtualization Module
• Vendor agnostic capabilities compatible with VMware, Microsoft and Xen products
• Pooling of VMs to manage power and resource consumption
• Power state management of VMs
• Deep ESX™ integration with support for VM registration, querying of non-running VMs, inventory etc.
• Support for Microsoft® Hyper-V
• Xen

Sentral Console
• Centrally manage virtual desktops
• Manage thousands of nodes from a single console
• Delegate administrative access level and authority to different organizational units
• Aggregate device health/utilization and session status into a single dashboard view
• Audit and create detailed reports of management activities and user sessions
• Group devices and users by type, location, or any other criteria through Custom Views
• Custom alerts that trigger Console notifications, emails, messages to 3rd party applications or self-healing actions
• Remotely control blades and access devices (Session Mirroring)
• Manage vPro-enabled systems with support for console redirection and out-of-band management. These capabilities help reduce the cost of discovering, managing and securing desktop PCs in the enterprise and thereby improving compliance with corporate policies.
• Remotely BIOS update capabilities

Switching Module
• Virtual Machine, chassis and blade management includes environmental sensors with active alerting
• Move any user to another VM in the event of a failure with Spare Switching; supports unparalleled VM-to-Blade or Server, VM-to-VM and Server or Blade-to-VM switches
• When running on ClearCube hardware, switch any user to any blade in the chassis with 8x8 hardware switching
• Hardware control with Administrator Switching

Pricing and Availability
ClearCube Sentral v5.6 is available now. Contact ClearCube or one of its Channel Partners for specific pricing information.

About ClearCube Technology
ClearCube is the market leader of centralized computing and virtual desktop solutions.  As the pioneer of centralized desktop computing, ClearCube provides solutions that span 1:1 power users to 1:many virtualized desktop environments, integrating connection broker software, blades, access devices and professional services to give organizations full control and flexibility over end-user computing. ClearCube’s Sentral™ VDI Management System provides clients the ability to utilize any back-end hardware or user access device for desktop virtualization. Organizations deploying ClearCube gain improved manageability, 99.9 percent availability and hardened security while reducing support costs by more than 40 percent. For more information, visit its corporate website at www.clearcube.com