December 10, 2007, Dallas, TX – SoftLayer announced the launch of the industry's first on-demand IP Manager. Available to all customers via SoftLayer’s proprietary customer portal and API, IP Manager allows administrators to assign, provision and route IP space at will. It provisions static IP addresses for single server use or portable IP addresses to be used with clustering, virtualization and grid applications.
“IP Manager turns even the most novice user practically into a network engineer. They can manage their own IP space in minutes without any human intervention at the data center," said Ric Moseley, SoftLayer Vice President of Engineering. "It’s just one more part of our continued strategy to give customers complete control.”
IP Manager provides what has been a missing element in the practical application of virtualization, as virtualization becomes an increasingly popular and cost-effective technology. "If you can add virtual servers on the fly but can’t provision IP's just as quickly, virtualization is somewhat worthless," Mr. Moseley said. “Our team took their understanding of that situation and spent the last several months creating the most robust solution you can imagine.”
IP Manager also delivers IP management within SoftLayer’s private network. It assigns each new portable IP allocation a matching private IP allocation for use with private network services. As physical machines are divided into virtual machines, IP Manager allocates the public and private IP space needed to make each virtual machine operate as a dedicated server on the SoftLayer network.
In addition, Mr. Moseley said that SoftLayer’s development team is currently working to improve the company’s licensing manager with a similar focus on dedicated and virtual technologies. Slated to launch in the first quarter of 2008, the updated licensing manager will allow for the purchase and expiration of licenses for dedicated and virtual machines. |
