3Tera, Inc., the leading innovator of grid computing and utility computing services for web applications, announced today the alpha release of a new concept in data center operations, Dynamic Appliances. Dynamic Appliances extend 3Tera's philosophy of simplifying operations to the point where elements become so simple to manage that they can be configured to manage themselves.

Dynamic Appliances are packaged data center operations like backup, migration or SLAs that users can add to their applications to provide functionality. Unlike traditional data center management systems that require months to deploy and numerous system administrators to maintain, Dynamic Appliances allow data center operations to be easily and directly embedded into distributed applications simply by dragging and dropping them into the application, where the decision rules for operation are simplest to define and maintain. The application thereby gains the ability to perform that operation for itself, even when moved to another data center.

Dynamic Appliances work by leveraging the ability of 3Tera's AppLogic grid operating system to package distributed applications into manageable entities. For instance, the Backup Dynamic Appliance, which is used to backup an application to an offsite service, doesn't require configuration with lists of files or firewall rules because it can simply issue commands to AppLogic to perform operations on entire distributed applications.

"Dynamic Appliances make complex data center operations like backups, SLAs, disaster recovery, that till now were performed only for mission critical applications, available and affordable to all applications." commented Peter Nickolov, president and CTO, 3Tera. "Because they are so easy to adopt and maintain by any AppLogic user, Dynamic Appliances provide a very efficient way to cut time consuming and expensive operations for many Web 2.0 or SaaS providers."

"One of the biggest advantages of utility computing is the reduction in labor required to deploy, maintain and scale applications," said Bert Armijo, senior vice president, Sales and Product Management, 3Tera. "To accomplish this, we focus on driving manageability down into the applications, making them self-manageable. This is a very powerful way to deal with operations, because at the application level, most management issues are small and can be handled with just a few properties."

Availability
3Tera's Dynamic Appliances are now available as alpha release to all AppLogic users at no additional cost. Initially Backup and Migration Dynamic Appliances be available. The SLA, Disaster Recovery, Patch Management and Power Saver appliances will be rolled out during the alpha. Prospective users can find more information at www.3tera.com/dynamic-appliances.html.