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Embotics Unveils V-Scout, Free Utility with V-Commander Capabilities

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Embotics (previous coverage), a virtualization management tools provider that recently released its flagship product V-Commander 2.0, today will announce a free, starter version of that program with the exact same interface dubbed V-Scout. If you’re trying to figure out the best way to track and automate virtual machines before they sprawl much further throughout your organization, this chance to peek at the Embotics approach for free should be appealing.

“V-Scout should help you answer some key questions about virtual machines in your shop; for instance, the tool can help you analyze how the VMs are produced and tracked and what IT management policies are being applied to the VMs,” says Embotics VP of marketing David Lynch. “Then you can automate policies for better management and security, and for help at auditing time.”

The free tool includes canned and ad hoc reporting capabilities, so you can slice and dice VM data by say, line of business owner or project number. Embotics tools currently work only with VMware infrastructure; Lynch says Microsoft Hyper-V support will arrive in late 2008 or early 2009 after Embotics gets the necessary management tools from Microsoft. Citrix support is planned for 2009.

[Source: Scott Lowe]

Hyper9 Comes Out Of Stealth, Focuses On Letting You Find And Manage Virtual Machines

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Hyper9, formerly known as InovaWave, provider of search-based software for virtual environment management, today announced its first product, carrying the same name as its parent company. Hyper9 will be free to download in September.

Hyper9

Hyper9, a privately held company headquartered in Austin, Texas, leverages a “Google-like” search engine to access both real-time and historical data on everything from the guest operating system to the physical infrastructure, then presents that data via a “next-generation” user interface. As a result, Hyper9 claims this approach supports faster troubleshooting, comprehensive monitoring and detailed reporting on the performance, configuration and utilization of virtual environments.

“Just as virtualization is transforming traditional computing, Hyper9 is ready with a truly scalable, flexible and intuitive approach to managing these dynamic environments,” said Chris Ostertag, president and CEO of Hyper9, Inc. “Hyper9’s unique architecture ensures that it can adapt to and accommodate the continually changing nature of virtual environments even as they gravitate to more hybrid states.”

The initial Hyper9 virtual appliance is designed to work only with the VMware ESX environment. Later versions will work with additional hypervisors, the company announced.

Hyper9

Embotics Releases V-Commander 2.0, Aims To Simplify Virtualization Lifecycle Management

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Embotics, which bills itself as a “Virtualization Lifecycle Management Company”, today released V-Commander 2.0 at the Gartner IT Infrastructure, Operations and Management Summit 2008.

Embotics

The new version of V-Commander reduces risks and costs by preventing virtual sprawl, automating lifecycle management and extending management systems for enterprise CIOs, CSOs, IT operations staff and security professionals. Learn more about the product in our video interviews with Jean-Marc Seguin, Chief Architect with Embotics (we’ve embedded the clip below) and the company’s founder and CEO, Jay Litkey.

V-Commander 2.0 aims to simplify virtual machine (VM) management within IT environments. Its features include:

  • Expanded Policy Capabilities – Increased capacity for new policies enables expanded zones and VM grouping, as well as additional policy actions for the different stages of the VM lifecycle.
  • Improved Reporting Capabilities – Facilitates unlimited custom reporting as well as task oriented reports that identify costs associated with expired, offline and unauthorized VMs.
  • Additional Enterprise Features – Provides easier installation and configuration workflow by enabling automatic VM identification tagging and the ability to associate and assign policies to groups as opposed to individual VMs.

[Source: BusinessWire]

Reading Tip: “Do Hypervisors Need A Supravisor?”

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Check out this article on IT-Analysis.com from Clive Longbottom, Head of Research at Quocirca.

After a good overview of the current virtualization market, he asks himself and readers if there is a need for a ‘supravisor’ on top of existing hypervisors, by which he means a way of providing a high-speed, ultra-transparent means of abstracting the abstraction layer, giving a fully standardized platform under which different hypervisors can operate.

Well worth the read, here’s an abstract:

“What it all points to is the likelihood that an organisation will end up with a heterogeneous virtualised environment, with 2 or more main virtualisation technologies creating issues for management, provisioning and auditing of the environment.

One of the main needs here will be for image management. A function or application that is needed has to be provisioned into the virtualised environment. The best way of doing this is from virtual images. Unfortunately, a virtual image saved on a VMware platform (often known as a virtual appliance) cannot be easily deployed under a different virtualised environment, as the images are dependent on the proprietary form of the specific virtualisation engine.”

…

“This supravisor need not be massively intelligent itself—it may be that all that is required is a means of carrying out fast V2V image translations and ensuring that a management console understands what the underlying environment is before provisioning. It may be something more—something that means that a single image can be used directly on top of a standardised layer. It may be that as time goes on, a supravisor subsumes the existing virtualisation technologies already in use. The ones who could do this are the systems management vendors—the likes of IBM Tivoli, CA, HP and BMCs and Microsoft—but will they?”

Read the full article here.