FastScale’s new platform builds, optimizes, and manages the next-gen datacenter

FastScale Technology just introduced its latest next-generation datacenter platform, Stack Manager Workgroup Edition.  The company said this platform enables enterprise IT and engineering teams to easily create, optimize, and manage logical servers for deployment in physical, virtual, or cloud environments, covering all three bases of the next-generation datacenter.  I’ve heard about the company’s “build once, deploy anywhere” methodology, but wanted to find out more.

[ Find out more about the FastScale Composer Suite that includes Microsoft Windows support | Is it too early to talk about defining the cloud and creating an open cloud manifesto? ]

To dig in deeper, I spoke with FastScale’s VP of marketing, Jerry McLeod.

InfoWorld:  What do you see as the biggest issue IT managers and enterprises have to deal with today in regard to their datacenters?

FastScale:  Managing a modern datacenter requires coping with continuous change and struggling with the day-to-day reality of increasing complexity.  Workloads may be deployed on multiple hardware platforms, virtualized, or possibly moved to an off-premise cloud.  Yet, through it all, IT managers have to deliver a reliable, uninterrupted stream of computing service as economically as possible, while budgets and staff struggle to keep pace.

Although server virtualization technology can simplify some aspects of deployment and improve machine utilization rates, management complexity may double if your software environments need to be available for both physical and virtual deployment.  With the ever-increasing complexity of operating systems and applications, testing and maintaining server software with constant patch and security updates has become a major resource drain on already strapped IT departments.

InfoWorld:  What does the FastScale Stack Manager Workgroup Edition offer enterprises?

FastScale:  FastScale Stack Manager is a unified and fully automated platform for building, optimizing, and managing all the software in enterprise datacenters.  Spanning virtual, physical, and cloud-based infrastructure for both Windows and Linux environments, FastScale Stack Manager helps IT managers seamlessly adapt to changing needs with a central platform and a one-button solution for dynamic and optimized server builds to:

• Manage virtual, physical, cloud from a single point
• Streamline software stacks up to 95% automatically
• Increase VM density and decrease memory requirements
• Remove vulnerable components and increase security

By combining “logical” server methodologies with innovations for building lightweight software stacks with “just enough operating system” (JeOS), enterprise IT can respond on the fly to constantly changing business needs, workloads, and hardware platforms while significantly reducing day-to-day operating complexity and cost.

InfoWorld:  So what does FastScale consider a logical server?

FastScale:  It’s an abstracted server that can be deployed to virtual, physical, or cloud-based infrastructure using a single software stack specification.  Logical servers allow IT to plan, deploy, re-deploy, scale out, and manage hybrid and dynamic environments without making changes to the software stack — you build once, deploy anywhere.

InfoWorld:  How does FastScale Stack Manager Workgroup Edition create logical servers?

FastScale:  FastScale Stack Manager provides robust tools for defining and optimizing logical servers, including support for complex multi-tiered applications.  The graphical Intelligent Stack Editor enables fine-grained configuration and customization as well as the ability to easily compare versions of server builds and identify deltas.  Policy-based, hierarchical configuration settings can be applied to logical servers or groups of logical servers to customize network information, security policies, patch policies, environment variables, application configuration files, enable shell scripts, and more.

With patent-pending Application Blueprint technology, FastScale Stack Manager can automatically identify the precise operating system dependencies of your application and build a lightweight server with JeOS, on-demand. Configuring your logical server for JeOS results in a server build that is up to 95% smaller utilizing 75 percent or less system resources. And with fewer system services deployed, lightweight server builds are more secure by design.  Application Blueprinting can also be used as an insurance policy against deploying legacy software stacks with missing file dependencies by comparing the server build to an Application Blueprint — missing files can be added with a simple mouse click.

InfoWorld: How is FastScale Stack Manager Workgroup Edition relevant to today’s IT initiatives?

FastScale: The accelerating complexity and dynamic nature of next-generation datacenters requires integrated solutions that readily abstract the logical from the physical and deliver a scalable management platform to replace the collections of disparate tools, scripts, and manual intervention commonly in use.

FastScale Stack Manager was designed from the ground up to provide a unified and fully automated platform to build, optimize, and manage cross-platform server deployments that span virtual, physical, and cloud-based infrastructures.

By addressing not only how server software is deployed, but also how servers are built in the first place, FastScale Stack Manager delivers a low-cost, high-efficiency infrastructure for managing the operational reality of dynamic computing in complex, heterogeneous environments.

InfoWorld:  Can you explain to us the benefits of the FastScale Stack Manager?

FastScale:  FastScale Stack Manager was designed from the ground up to provide a unified and fully automated platform to build, optimize, and manage cross-platform server deployments that span virtual, physical, and cloud-based infrastructures.  With FastScale Stack Manager, IT can:

Maximize performance

• Build up to 95 percent smaller software stacks on demand
• Run three tims or more VMs without degrading performance
• Decrease memory and disk usage by 75 percent or more

Save time

• Build logical servers once with flexible output formats
• Right-size VMDK and AMI containers dynamically
• Include preconfigured tools automatically

Unify infrastructure

• Manage virtual, physical, cloud servers centrally
• Manage all software assets from a single point
• Enable full traceability and reproducibility

Whether an enterprise has deployed virtual or cloud-based infrastructure, requires high-performing physical servers, or has a combination of all three, FastScale Stack Manger delivers the agility, performance, and scalable infrastructure required to deliver more computing with less resource, time, and expense.

I want to once again thank FastScale’s VP of marketing, Jerry McLeod, for taking the time to speak with me about his latest product.