VKernel, a maker of virtual appliances designed to manage virtual servers, this week announced it had raised $4.6 million in its first round of institutional funding, which was led by Hummer Winblad Venture Partners and Polaris Venture Partners.

Founded in January 2007, VKernel offers customers  plug-and-play virtual applications that address systems management challenges companies will face when migrating traditional servers to virtual machines. (Compare server management products.)  

"Organizations of all sizes are virtualizing their server farms, which is creating a new set of systems management challenges," said Alex Bakman, founder and CEO of VKernel, in a statement. The company says its VKernel Virtual Appliance Suite helps customers determine resource consumption for cost and chargeback purposes, as well as prevent capacity bottlenecks in virtual server environments. By packaging the technology as a virtual appliance, VKernel says it reduces effort around installing, learning and using the product. "VKernel is delivering tiny virtual appliances designed to solve specific issues," Bakman added.

Companies such as Fortisphere, ToutVirtual, Veeam, Vizioncore (recently acquired by Quest Software, but still operating on its own), and Virtugo Software launched in the past few years promising to reduce the headaches associated with managing multiple virtual machines.

Investors say VKernel along with competitive start-ups could succeed considering the growing popularity of virtual servers in enterprise IT shops.  

"The server virtualization market is growing explosively," said Mitchell Kertzman, managing director at Hummer Winblad, in a statement. "This has us very excited about VKernel's vision as it is providing the essential tools for IT staffs to virtualize their environments faster, more cost-effectively and with greater confidence."

VKernel also announced that Kertzman as well as Dave Barrett of Polaris Venture Partners will join the company's board of directors. VKernel is a certified VMware partner, and the company's Chargeback Virtual Appliance is available for a trial download here.