* Automation is a VMworld theme for companies, including virtualization management start-up Reflex Systems
With VMworld 2010 this week, and in particular VMware’s own strategic cloud infrastructure announcements, start-ups and longtime IT fixtures alike are clamoring to get the word out that they’ve got what it takes to help enterprises coordinate between virtualized premises-based infrastructure and the public cloud.
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As Rachel Chalmers, research director of infrastructure management at The 451 Group, says, “What everybody is thinking about now is A) how to satisfy enterprise desires to make their own premises infrastructure more cloud-like and assessable to the public cloud and B) how to compete against VMware.”
Automation is the ticket.
As examples, Chalmers cites two recent virtualization automation-related deals: Citrix Systems’ acquisition of VMLogix, announced yesterday, and Quest Software’s buyout of Surgient, closed earlier this month. “In both cases, these are test lab automation vendors whose products naturally lend themselves to adding a layer of automation on top of virtualized infrastructure and potentially opening gates into the public cloud,” Chalmers says.
Automation, too, is the goal of Reflex Systems, which announced its self-service virtual infrastructure management strategy and products at VMworld Monday. The company is differentiating itself among many others vying for a place in the self-service cloud ecosystem by focusing on simplifying the back-end management, says Mike Wronski, vice president of product development at Reflex.
That Reflex began life as a virtualization security vendor and then moved into virtualization systems management is a plus, Chalmers says. “Reflex has particular strengths around monitoring because the disciplines of intrusion detection and application performance monitoring are similar in that you’re watching the traffic in both cases,” she says.
Reflex Virtualization Management Center (VMC) is the foundational platform on which Reflex builds out its vWatch, for monitoring and compliance; vTrust, for security segmentation; and vProfile, for configuration management and functions, Wronski describes. “We have the ability to do integration in the back end, which provides automation and correlation across the feature sets,” he adds.
Now, he says, Reflex is working on extending existing and adding new functionality in order to link front-end cloud delivery software to its back-end management platform.
Toward that end, it’s released its Private Cloud Initiative vision, which includes dynamic infrastructure enablement, including provisioning, configuration management and capacity planning; visualization, to improve performance, simplify troubleshooting and enable asset tracking and billing; security and dynamic policy enforcement across the physical and virtual infrastructure; and the ability to connect with public clouds easily.
As part of the initiative, Reflex has beefed up Reflex VMC with cloud portal integration and an extension of the Reflex application programming interface to private cloud providers, plus increased integration and script automation, Wronski says. Interestingly too, Reflex has introduced a focus on networking and storage management integration and visibility.
Reflex also announced that HPTippingPoint and Arista Networks already support its Private Cloud Initiative with management integration.
The type of automation Reflex envisions and has begun enabling will be essential for enterprises going forward into the cloud, Chalmers says. “You need a force multiplier for the admins. You end up with VMware sprawl, with many more machine images per systems administrator, and that becomes completely unmanageable unless you have some kind of formal way to automate processes and provide self-service provisioning and to enforce policy across that infrastructure.”
