BladeLogic this week announced an add-on to its data center automation software that the company says lets IT managers monitor virtual platforms alongside their physical machines.

BladeLogic Virtualization Manager is a new module for the company's Operations Manager software. The software provides IT managers with the capabilities to provision, patch, audit, administer and manage virtual servers.

"Our customers have physical servers and virtual instances configured the same across environments and want to have tools to manage both granular configurations from one console," says Vance Loiselle, vice president of marketing at BladeLogic.

The software includes an agent that supports VMware's ESX Server platform and it exposes the configuration items in the virtual environment to the server management software. It also sends and reports on data from the virtual environment to the same console IT managers use to monitor physical servers, the company says.

BladeLogic competes with management software makers such as BMC Software, CA, HP and IBM, as well as fellow data center automation vendor Opsware -- all of which have announced tools to manage virtual servers and environments.

BladeLogic says it differentiates itself with features that enable IT managers to put policies in place against which configurations can be compared to ensure compliance. Loiselle says with this feature BladeLogic provides a control framework to ensure virtual servers don't stray from the rules enforced in the physical environment.

"We provide a configuration-level access control mechanism because with virtualization there has been an explosion of the amount people have to manage," he says.

The virtualization model ships with BladeLogic Operations Manager 7.2 and costs $2,000 per ESX Server.