* Virtualization is the latest technology every management vendor touts as its most recent must-have feature
Management software makers never get a moment’s rest. As soon as a new technology takes off, they must get to work ramping up their management suites to tackle availability, fault and performance for the leading-edge trend.
Virtualization is the latest disruptive technology that every management vendor is touting as its most recent must-have feature — meaning their applications can manage, optimize, provision, protect and care for virtual environments. Not only are established vendors and start-ups making virtualization a priority, companies such as Nimsoft, Opnet, Veeam and most certainly many others including virtualization giant VMware this week plan to use VMworld Europe 2008 as a launch pad for new management and security tools for virtual environments.
Management software maker Nimsoft for one plans to unveil an updated NimBUS for VMware, which the company says delivers automation features that provide customers with the ability to centrally manage virtual and physical IT infrastructure. NimBUS for VMware can also now work with VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler to kick off actions to migrate virtual machines based upon performance issues to prevent service level or business policy violations. And NimBUS for VMware now provides auto discovery of all ESX hosts, virtual machines, clusters and resource pools.
Separately, Opnet last week announced it had upgraded its IT Guru Systems Planner capacity planning tool with capabilities that enable it to predict the performance impact of server consolidation and virtualization — which the company says will help customers make better decisions around virtualization. Virtual Machine Quick Predict, or VMQP, is the new feature that enables IT Guru Systems Planner to provide IT managers with guided workflows that assess current server workload and predict if virtualization would enable more efficient utilization of resources. The technology can then determine automatically the capacity required for the host server and each virtual machine, Opnet says.
And virtual management newcomer Veeam this week at VMworld Europe will debut its Veeam Management Suite for VMware, which the company says “works with and extends VMware VirtualCenter to help simplify the management of virtual environments.” The suite includes three applications: Veeam Reporter, which automatically discovers and collects data on VMware Infrastructure 3 environments; Veeam Monitor, which is an agentless product that monitors multiple ESX Servers and multiple VirtualCenters; and Veeam Configurator, which allows virtual systems administrators to manage configurations and settings on multiple VMware ESX Server without having to write scripts.
