VMTurbo Takes Virtualization Management to New Levels
VMTurbo, a supplier of intelligent virtualization management solutions, has updated its signature Operations Manager product with new storage and hybrid-cloud extensions the company announced in June.
Operations Manager automatically regulates the allocation of resources and workloads among virtual machines by balancing the needs of those with higher and lower performance requirements. It also allows IT workers to manage VMs in heterogeneous virtual and cloud environments from a single VM (or instance) using VMTurbo’s patented analytic and scheduling engine.
Version 4.0 is a major upgrade that promises to enhance Operations Manager’s capabilities by allowing for more-granular fine-tuning of resource allocation through new storage and cloud plug-ins, among other new features. Supported hypervisors include VMware vCloud Director and vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V, Citrix XenServer and the open-source CloudStack.
Initially, the new storage plug-in will be available only for NetApp filers. However, VMTurbo Director of Product Marketing Lauren Whitehouse tells The Register that plug-ins for NAS and SAN storage arrays from other manufacturers — including EMC, IBM and HP — are in the works.
On the cloud side, Operations Manager’s new hybrid-cloud plug-in lets IT workers directly control the computational and storage components of cloud platforms like Microsoft’s Windows Azure. That way, according to VMTurbo, the virtualization manager can provide specific guidance regarding the “what, when and where” of running workloads in private- , public- or hybrid-cloud infrastructures.
As Whitehouse tells The Register, “Figuring out which workloads can burst out to a public cloud is a difficult task.” The new hybrid extension promises to assist enterprises in making that determination, as well cost and performance calculations.
“To maintain the health of the infrastructure, it’s imperative to understand the topological relationships and dependencies that are required to effectively drive intelligent decisions and actions within the IT environment spanning public and private clouds,” adds VMTurbo Chief Technology Officer Shmuel Kliger in a statement celebrating the product’s release. “VMTurbo’s foundational framework and policy engine combined with component extensions address the IT stack above and below the virtualization layer, driving resource allocation and workload placement decisions that optimize efficiency and assure performance of virtualized workloads.”
Operations Manager 4.0 enhancements also give admins the ability to access storage policies and tweak recommendations as necessary, provide greater flexibility for service providers to manage and share metrics with subscribers, and offer at-a-glance views of workload utilization.
