VMWare Enhances Virtual Application Management

VMware is putting new capabilities into its vCenter virtualization management product.

VMware on 13 July unveiled the AppSpeed and Chargeback features for vCenter, which are designed to help data centre administrators automate the management of their virtualised environments.

Enterprises are continuing to grow their use of virtualisation in the data centre and are moving more of their workloads onto these VMs (virtual machines), Melinda Wilken, senior director of product marketing at VMware, said in an interview.

Given those trends, enterprises are looking for better ways to manage their virtualised environments in a more dynamic fashion.

“All of these vCenter [enhancements] allow enterprises to achieve these goals in one way or another,” Wilken said.

AppSpeed gives businesses greater confidence when putting their applications into virtualised environments, she said. The feature offers service-level reporting and proactive performance management for applications running on VMs, giving users insight into application performance, usage and dependencies in both the physical and virtual infrastructure. The shared-view aspect of the feature lets multiple people see what’s going on, which results in a faster time to resolution when problems arise, Wilken said.

VMware’s vCenter Chargeback feature enables IT administrators to better map the use of their virtualised environments, and then charge the cost of that use to the right department. IT staff members can track base cost models, fixed costs and other aspects to the data centre resources.

In addition, the “showback” capability of the feature lets IT administrators give business users a clear view of the resources they’ve used and the costs of those resources. vCenter Chargeback also automatically can create detailed billing reports.

Both products are available now and can be delivered as plug-in options to vCenter. AppSpeed is available for $1,250 (£768) per CPU, Chargeback for $750 each.

In addition to the new features, VMware also upgraded its vCenter Lab Manager for development and test environments. Among the key enhancements was the company’s decision to merge it with Stage Manager, which will give users a single offering for everything from delivering applications from development to production, to release management, training and support.

In addition, bringing the two solutions together will make it easier for development teams to work together, and support for both ESX and ESXi means more deployment options for IT administrators.