Veeam scales up nworks to manage VMware vSphere

Veeam has linked virtual machines with HP and Microsoft management suites

Veeam Software has introduced new versions of its nworks tools that bring VMware infrastructure under the control of existing Microsoft and HP enterprise management consoles.

Available immediately, nworks 5.0 adds support for vSphere 4, the latest version of VMware's platform, and delivers improvements to enable nworks itself to scale up to cover very large virtual machine deployments.

"In large deployments, customers were running into scalability issues, which are actually caused by a limitation in VMware's APIs," said Veeam chief executive Ratmir Timashev.

This limitation meant that customers with more than 100 physical hosts for virtual machines needed to deploy several Collectors – the component of nworks that monitors the virtual machines, he explained.

To address this, Veeam has introduced a web-based console, nworks Management Center, which provides administrators with a simpler way to deploy and configure multiple Collectors and which doubles as a licence server.

The central point of control has also enabled Veeam to build more resilience into nworks, according to Timashev.

Management Center can provide load balancing to evenly distribute monitoring tasks across all the Collector instances, eliminating the need for manual configuration.

It can also detect the failure of a Collector, and automatically redistribute the workload to ensure no lapse in monitoring availability.

Nworks 5.0 also brings full support for vSphere 4, taking advantage of new functionality in the latest version of the VMware platform, according to Timashev.

This includes management support for Distributed Power Management, Host Profiles vApp virtual applications, and vSphere's Fault Tolerance feature.

Timashev claimed that, while vSphere is designed to have a degree of autonomous self-management, many enterprise customers still want to be able to control their entire datacentre infrastructure from a single console.

"Companies have already made very large investments in management suites and training staff to create their standard IT operations framework, and now with virtual machines they want a single solution to control both the virtual and physical," he said.

The nworks tools are actually two separate products: the Management Pack for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (MP), and the Smart Plug-in for HP Operations Manager (SPI), which bring virtual machines under the control of Microsoft and HP management tools, respectively.

Veeam said that UK pricing for the new versions remains unchanged at £360 per processor socket on each managed server for nworks MP and £552.99 per socket for nworks SPI.