VMware, which leads the market in x86 server virtualization, is updating its flagship software to give end users the tools they need to run more important business applications in highly available environments.

In advance of its second annual VMworld User Conference this week, VMware is expected to unveil ESX Server 3, which taps into the increasing power of x86 systems by allowing a virtual machine to span as many as four physical processors and support up to 16G bytes of memory. Today, ESX Server supports two-processor configurations and 3.5G bytes of memory.

The additional processing power and memory capacity will enable end users to put more demanding workloads, such as databases and ERP applications, into virtualized environments, analysts say.

In addition, VMware executives say they will update their VirtualCenter management platform, providing better reporting and auditing capabilities and introducing new management tools aimed at making it easier to create flexible, highly available virtual environments.

The new tools are called Distributed Availability Services and Distributed Resource Scheduling. They build on technology VMware introduced about two years ago with VMotion, a feature of VirtualCenter that lets end users move virtual machines among physical systems.

Distributed Availability Services detect problems on physical servers and virtual machines and automatically redeploy resources, as needed. Distributed Resource Scheduling lets end users set policies for resource allocation so that if a server is operating beyond a threshold of 80% utilization, for example, a process triggers to move a running virtual machine to a more appropriate physical server.

Doug Baer, systems engineer at Desert Schools Federal Credit Union in Phoenix, has been using ESX Server for about a year and a half. The credit union has experienced significant benefits since consolidating some 52 physical servers on to seven HP ProLiant systems, saving more than $175,000 in hardware costs.

Baer says he also sees savings because the virtual machines are easier to manage and quicker to deploy than traditional physical servers.

"Now we use one of the schedule features of VMotion to bump the priority of certain machines in the middle of the night when they run their jobs, but if we could dynamically move machines around based on load, that would be huge for us," Baer says.