VMworld: VMware aims to automate IT with new vSphere tools

COPENHAGEN: VMware has announced a trio of management products intended to move its vSphere platform beyond consolidation and towards simplifying and automating operations, so that enterprise IT infrastructure "just works", the firm said.

At its VMworld 2011 conference in Copenhagen, VMware announced official availability of vSphere 5, the latest release of its platform unveiled in July.

Building on vSphere 5, the firm also announced vCenter Operations Management Suite, vFabric Application Management Suite and IT Business Management Suite, tools designed to move customers further along the road to a fully realised IT-as-a-service architecture.

vCenter Operations Management Suite converges the siloed infrastructure and operations sides of IT management, according to VMware chief technology officer Stephen Herrod.

It builds on the existing vCenter Operations tool, capturing information from various sources in vSphere, and condensing it into a dashboard view that can highlight developing problems in the infrastructure and allow IT staff to drill down and identify the cause, he explained.

"It's a converged view from the infrastructure and operations perspective, so those separate teams can now work together. It's something we're calling ‘cloud ops'," Herrod said.

Meanwhile, vFabric Application Management Suite aims to do a similar task for development, so-called "dev ops". It provides flexibility for deployment and monitoring of applications, showing how they are running and where any problems are, and will help firms trying to make applications cloud-ready, according to Herrod.

Aimed at chief information officers (CIOs), IT Business Management Suite provides visibility and control into all vital infrastructure, with a dashboard that draws together performance, spend and other metrics to deliver a single view of IT capital and operational expenditure, plus other metrics.

"The real challenge for CIOs is managing complexity, and how to make the right choices when considering what to move out to the cloud and how to measure the benefits," Herrod explained.

The updated vCenter Operations Management Suite is expected to be available in early 2012, and will be offered in four editions, as VMware detailed when it was originally announced, priced from $50 (£32) per virtual machine.

Also coming in 2012 is vFabric AppDirector, while vFabric Application Performance Manager is expected before the end of 2011, with prices starting at $360 (£229) per virtual machine.

The IT Business Management Suite is set to be available in the fourth quarter of 2011. Licensing has not been disclosed, but will be on a per-user basis.