VMware recently introduced software that allows businesses to balance resources among a variety of servers.

Called VMware Control Center, the software lets administrators manage servers, including blade servers, as a single pool. Administrators can move applications across the servers of an enterprise network without taking servers down or losing data or transactions. This lets them optimize the utilization of the servers in the network.

VMware’s software works on Intel and Microsoft Windows platforms and lets users create multiple operating system images or application images on a server.

Virtualization of processing resources lets administrators manage virtual machines or disk images from a central interface. A Virtual Machine Dashboard feature lets admins monitor and manage the availability of servers and provision server resources. There is a server provisioning capability in the form of a wizard-based system, which can be used to deploy a large number of templates for virtual machines. Further, users can assign administrators to manage different servers or virtual machines.

VMware has partnerships with IBM, Dell, NEC and HP, among others.

VMWare’s other products, GSX and ESX Server, compete with Microsoft’s Connectix acquisition and SW-Soft.
 
VMware Control Center is expected to be available later this year. It is currently in beta tests.