Management tool for data centers ...

... moves to open-source, then will go proprietary again. Qlusters Inc. in Palo Alto, Calif., this week will unveil openQRM, its open-source systems management software for Linux servers. Until now, the company has sold the tool as proprietary technology. CEO Ofer Shoshan says the software can manage up to 5,000 systems and lets you establish policies to automatically provision Intel-based servers with Linux and applications. William Hurley, chief technology officer at Qlusters, claims that most provisioning of Linux systems is done with homegrown scripts, which become problematic once you get beyond 100 servers. Next summer, Qlusters will release Enterprise QRM, a proprietary version that will add features not available in the open-source edition. You can get openQRM service and support from Qlusters starting at an annual fee of $750 per server.

Virtualize all of your apps in the ...

... Linux, Windows and now Solaris worlds. And you don't need agent code running on your systems. That's the promise Bill Coleman, CEO of San Jose-based Cassatt Corp., makes about his company's Collage tool. Coleman says Collage 3.2 lets you set policies for application service levels instead of tying applications to a specific machine or cluster. "You can scale up or out, based on utilization and quality-of-service needs," he says. Collage strips away elements that bind applications to a given machine and monitors the apps to ensure that their performance meets service-level agreements. The new release includes support for Solaris on Sparc and adds policy tools for Web services. An average deployment costs $100,000.