News Roundup: VMware Pumps Cash Into Puppet, More

Puppet Labs has received a $30 million investment from VMware. The cash infusion will help accelerate development of the company's product line and expand its footprint globally. Portland-based Puppet Labs offers commercial and open-source infrastructure management software. In conjunction with the funding, Puppet and VMware have entered a strategic partnership to help enterprises make the most of virtualization and cloud computing. VMware executive Raghu Raghuram will also join Puppet's board.

Puppet Enterprise, the commercial version of the company's flagship software, integrates with VMware's vSphere, and also supports virtualization platforms Red Hat and Microsoft. As part of the partnership, VMware and Puppet Labs will work together on additional product integrations, including vCloud Automation Center and vCenter Operations Manager. This past April, Puppet Labs unveiled one of the first OpenStack implementations suitable for enterprise-class production deployments at the OpenStack Summit in San Francisco.

Infoblox Launches Trio of Security Products

Infoblox debuted three products designed to help enterprises improve network security and availability. The company's new DNS Firewall is an add-on option to its DDI line of DNS, DHCP and IPAM products. The firewall aims to detect malware that has already penetrated the enterprise as it tries to connect to a command-and-control system or botnet controller.

The Infoblox Security Device Controller lets security administrators analyze, stage, test and provision firewall rule changes in a multivendor environment rather than having to apply rules manually one device at a time. Finally, the Infoblox Trinzic 100 Network Edge Services Appliance is aimed at organizations that have IP-enabled devices in multiple remote locations and need branch office network control from a central location. All three products are available now; pricing was not disclosed.

Cellular Management for IT

NetMotion Wireless has updated its Locality cellular network performance management software. It lets enterprises monitor and manage public cellular network service to improve the quality of their mobility deployments. The latest version of Locality now supports Windows 8 and Android devices and includes LTE network management features.

Locality is installed on each mobile user's device to gather information about it and its connection, including signal quality, location and app usage. This data is presented to IT staff visually as maps and reports, and allows enterprises to troubleshoot connectivity problems as well as compare carriers. For more details, see Larry Seltzer's overview at Byte.com. Locality is available now. Pricing starting at $80 per seat with an annual maintenance fee. Volume discounts available.

NetScout Launches nGenius 3900 Series

NetScout Systems unveiled the nGenius 3900 packet flow switch series for network monitoring. The new product expands on the company's initial entry into the market with the 1500 series, which is based on technology acquired by ONPATH Technologies. The 3900 is designed for high-density data centers with a chassis optimized for 10 and 40 Gigabit Ethernet. It is also 100GbE-interface-ready.

The nGenius 3900 series is available in a one-, three- and 12-slot chassis. Each module can scale to support from 16 to 576 ports of 10 GbE and up to 48 ports of 40 GbE in a single chassis. Ports can be configured to support either incoming or outgoing traffic flows. In addition to the nGenius 3900 series, NetScout has introduced the nGenius PFS Management to support the deployment and management of network monitoring fabrics built with the 3900 series. Pricing for the new switch varies based on the chassis, the number of ports and port speeds.