VMware debuts 'cloud' management tool

VMware today launched a cloud infrastructure management suite called vCenter Operations, using analytics technology acquired from vendor Integrien last August.

Built specifically for virtualised data centres, vCenter Operations analysed data from VMware's vSphere environments, including hardware components and other management tools, against performance metrics.

It supported change management and monitored day-to-day operations, generating numerical scores to indicate performance, and colour-coded "heat maps" to highlight the impact of abnormal behaviour.

When vCenter Operations was demonstrated at the VMware Partner Exchange last month, some attendees reportedly indicated that the vendor already offered too many management products.

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But according to VMware’s Asia Pacific senior manager of products and solutions, Michael Warrilow, previous management products were “built for physical machines”.

“Virtualisation is becoming more widely used ... this is one of the continuing areas where customers need a better solution,” he told iTnews this week.

vCenter Operations was based on Integrien’s Alive VM, which stemmed from its Alive for Enterprise monitoring tool that was used by “large financial services customers” on Wall Street, Warrilow said.

While he declined to disclose details of any discussions with Australian banks and service providers, Warrilow confirmed that Australian organisations were involved in a beta testing program with “tens and tens and tens” of VMware customers.

"The product has been proven in the field with very large, Wall-Street-Style customers," he said.

vCenter Operations was expected to ship in three flavours this month. ‘Standard’ and ‘Advanced’ editions were targeted at small to medium businesses with up to 500 virtual machines at US$50 ($49) for each VM.

Meanwhile, vCenter Operations Enterprise targeted large multinationals and cloud providers, offering customisable dashboards, smart alerting and application awareness to help IT-as-a-service providers meet their service level agreements.

VMware was inviting organisations to participate in a 60-day free trial of the software on up to 500 virtual machines.

Existing vSphere customers were invited to trial the software for three months, Warrilow said.