VMware vSphere 4.0 Kicks Rivals Into Touch

vSphere 4 also allows the integration of third-party distributed switches

The Cisco Nexus 1000v, which is at the end of its beta cycle, is the first announced switch in this category. If the Nexus 1000v fulfils its promise, it will usher a significant talent pool of Cisco-trained network engineers into the world of server virtualisation. This is likely to relieve system engineers who have been doubling up on virtual machine and virtual network tasks, while adding some much-needed network architecture experts to the data centre virtualisation mix.

IT managers can access multiple vCenter Servers from the vSphere Client interface. During tests, this allowed me to see and manage virtual machines and network switches on all of the vCenter Servers installed in the lab. I also linked these vCenter Servers together, another new function, which enabled me to share administrative roles.

This is a good example of the management features included in vSphere 4 that should help preserve the cost-savings that have been achieved from server consolidation projects.

Performance Monitors

Tests at eWEEK Labs showed that VMware has succeeded in bolstering physical and virtual machine performance monitors. Some of these changes are as simple as the addition of an “overview” button to the host performance tab that shows a variety of system measures, such as CPU, memory, disk and network utilisation, simultaneously, in charts.

It’s now much easier to move among performance charts by clicking on thumbnails to get detailed information about components on individual data centres, clusters or hosts. And another nice touch is the addition of context-sensitive information that is a button-click away from each data chart.

It’s good to see VMware exposing the performance data in this way. IT managers who have extensive non-virtualised systems may want to look at third-party tools from companies such as BMC that integrate virtual and physical-only system management to get a complete picture of data centre performance.

In my tests, I was able to spend only a few minutes with the vCenter Orchestrator, which is a workflow automation tool. As I enlarge the vSphere test infrastructure, I’ll be reporting on how Orchestrator works in managing the deployment and configuration of systems in the VMware infrastructure.

Cameron Sturdevant is technical director at eWeek.com.