French firm cuts out virtualization bull

French hardware provider Bull has launched an all-in-one virtualization server for companies looking for less complexity and the ability to reduce the number of deployed servers.
The NovaScale VMBox is currently available in two configurations and supports VMware ESX Server 3.5, with the VMware VirtualCenter Foundation management platform hosted on a separate NovaScale server.

The first configuration is the NovaScale VMBox Discovery, which includes one cluster of 2 NovaScale Universal servers (a total of 16 cores), a Bull StoreWay storage sub-system with a 2.4TB capacity, and VMware Infrastructure Standard Edition. Up to 16 virtual machines can be managed by this cluster.

The second configuration is the NovaScale VMBox Enterprise, which includes one cluster of 2 high performance NovaScale Universal (a total of 32 cores), Bull StoreWay storage sub-systems with a 3.6TB capacity and VMware Infrastructure Enterprise Edition.

Up to 32 virtual machines can be managed by this cluster, which can be extended by adding additional nodes -- each node supporting 32 additional virtual machines.

With the first two versions of NovaScale VMBox, Bull seems to be attempting to remove some of the complexity surrounding a virtualization server installation. Along with the servers, it is including storage sub systems, and pre-loaded software, as well as Bull's Calypso backup software. These configurations are pre-integrated, "thus enabling a 10 times faster deployment of an infrastructure at a lower cost."

"As a pre-integrated and tested solution NovaScale VMbox provides high availability through a complete redundancy of components and a total compliance with VMware recommendations", said Olivier Gaumont, Director of Bull's Enterprise Servers Business Unit in a statement.

The first two NovaScale VMBox modules are available immediately.

The list price of a Discovery configuration with 16 cores, 32GB memory, 2.4TB disk capacity, and VMware software, is 50,000 euros (US$75,946). Bull did not provide prices for the Enterprise configuration.