New Release of FastScale Composer Suite Provides Industry's Most Robust Platform

By VSM News Staff
published: Monday, July 13 2009

FastScale Composerä Suite 3.0 Enterprise Edition provides an array of new tools for building server software environments with on-the-fly deployment to physical, virtual and cloud-based infrastructure.

Santa Clara, Calif., July 13, 2009- FastScale Technology, Inc, provider ofaward-winning software platforms for next generation data centers, todayannounced the introduction of FastScale Composer Suite 3.0 EnterpriseEdition.  The flagship product in FastScale's integrated family ofsoftware platforms and solutions, the new FastScale Composer Suite is the mostadvanced solution on the market for building, optimizing, managing anddeploying server software in physical, virtual and now cloud-based environments.

"Next generation data centers are becoming increasingly complexand highly virtualized, requiring management process and tools across physical,virtual and cloud infrastructure," said Mark Bowker, analyst atEnterprise Strategy Group (ESG). "FastScale Composer Suite 3.0 helpsbusiness seek an improved return on their investment by providing an integratedsuite of tools that automates the process of building, managing and deployingof application workloads - significantly improving the efficiency andoptimization of the environment."

FastScale Composer Suite 3.0 utilizes a logical server infrastructurethat enables system administrators to ‘build once, deploy anywhere'and provides a standards-based approach to managing server software throughoutits lifecycle.  With logical servers, administrators can plan, deploy,re-deploy, scale out, and manage server builds in hybrid environments withoutmaking changes to the software stack.

FastScale's patent-pending Application Blueprintingä technology allows users to buildlightweight logical servers that are up to 95% smaller with ‘just enoughoperating system' (JeOS) - automatically.  The new releasealso provides a full spectrum of automated and iterative tools for optimizingtraditional software environments.  Powerful new analytical andvisualization tools enable roles-based Windows and Red Hat serverconfigurations to be specified and easily customized and configured.  Richweb-based settings management allows policy-based standardization as well as fine-grainedcustomization of all logical server configurations, both lightweight andtraditional.

"Building on the already successful multi-year relationship withFastScale, Informatica anticipates further deploying the FastScale ComposerSuite across a wide range of environments -physical, virtual and cloud -in order to manage the company's server software globally," said TonyYoung, CIO of Informatica.  "The FastScale solution willbe a critical component for building rapidly deployablelightweight environments as well as for managing and tracking all ofInformatica's server configurations. Informatica and FastScale plan toteam together to achieve an outstanding level of automation that weanticipate will increase VMware density, reduce administration costs andlessen downtime - all ofwhich will have an impact on our bottom line, which is valuableto me as a CIO."

FastScale Composer Suite 3.0 extends the deployment and managementcapabilities beyond bare-metal servers and VMwareâ Infrastructure to the Amazonâ Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2).  Theenterprise-class software repository, a key component of FastScale'smanagement infrastructure, maintains a complete history of all software assets,logical servers, roles and usage.  Now, software environments deployed toAmazon EC2 can be managed centrally with robust traceability andreproducibility of the software repository - FastScale Composer Suite 3.0provides common infrastructure for managing all physical, virtual andcloud-based servers.

New features of FastScale Composer Suite 3.0 Enterprise Editioninclude:

• Stack Optimization Tools - enable lightweight server builds that are up to 95% smaller, inherently more secure, with dramatically reduced memory, processor and disk usage. For traditional server builds, analytical and visualization tools enable users to quickly and easily analyze servers by role-based OS profile and then optimize by package group, file type or directory hierarchy. 

• Intelligent Stack EditorTM - provides a graphical dashboard for easy configuration and customization of optimized logical servers, including complex multi-tiered applications.  Files, directories and packages are easily added or deleted, and dynamic size calculations are visible as logical servers are defined and customized.

• Robust Configuration Settings - enables policy-based, hierarchical configuration settings to be applied to logical servers or groups of logical servers to customize network information, security policies, environment variables, application configuration files, enable shell scripts, and more.

• Software Repository - enhanced to support cloud-based deployment and provides centralized version management, tracking, traceability, and reproducibility of all software assets including operating systems, applications, configuration files, patches, logical server specifications, roles, permissions, scripts, metadata, and logs.   

• Dynamic Provisioning - allows server builds to be deployed on-demand to VMware Infrastructure, the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, or bare metal servers.

"FastScale Composer Suite is an innovative solution for automatedmanagement of server software across disparate environments spanning physical,virtual and cloud," said Ivan Perez, VP of Information Technologies,Extron Electronics.  "From building lightweight environments thatcan be deployed quickly to managing and tracking all of our configurations,FastScale promises to deliveran unprecedented level of automation.  For us, this can result inincreased VMware density, reduced administration costs, and less downtime- all of the measurements that have the greatest impact on our bottomline."

"In a climate of constrained resources, IT organizations arestruggling keep up.  Multiple management and deployment solutions thattarget different operating environments simply cannot provide the level ofautomation needed," said Lynn LeBlanc, CEO of FastScale Technology."The only way to address this is with an integrated platform designedfrom the ground up to support dynamic deployment in heterogeneous environmentsspanning physical, virtual and cloud-based implementations. This is exactlywhere FastScale Composer Suite 3.0 excels."

Pricing and Availability

FastScale Composer Suite Enterprise Edition is available now andpricing starts at $30,000. For more information, click here.

About FastScale Composer Suite

FastScale Composer Suite was designed specifically to address thecomplexity of next generation data centers by delivering an integrated softwaremanagement platform to build, optimize, manage and deploy server software foryour entire enterprise - whether physical or virtual, Windows orLinux.  Only with FastScale's patent-pending technology can yougenerate lightweight, resource-efficient server software stacks on-the-fly,dynamically provision in seconds to minutes without a SAN or NAS, increasevirtual server density by 3X or more, and manage all software assets in anenterprise-class repository.  FastScale Composer Suite delivers theindustry's most advanced and dynamic platform for managing constantly changingrequirements while significantly reducing day-to-day operating complexity andcost.

About FastScale Technology

FastScale Technology delivers an integrated family of softwareplatforms and solutions for next generation data centers.  Through its patent-pendingtechnologies, FastScale enables complex IT organizations to build, optimize,manage and deploy server software environments with unparalleled simplicity,flexibility and security while achieving dramatic lifecycle cost savings andserver utilization improvement. Headquartered in Santa Clara, California,FastScale is a privately held company backed by leading venture capital firmsincluding ATA Ventures, Leapfrog Ventures and Hunt Ventures. For moreinformation, visit www.fastscale.com.