Vizioncore Upgrades Virtual Machine Monitor, Manager

Virtualization management software vendor Vizioncore recently expanded its ability to manage VMware's ESX Server-generated virtual machines with its vFoglight product.

VFoglight monitors VMware's ESX Server hypervisor and the virtual machines it generates. It's able to provide a detailed representation of the virtual machine components, diagnose problems affecting performance, and respond with alerts and "out-of-the-box expert advice" on appropriate responses, said Chris Page, director of product management, in making the announcement last month.

VFoglight has been divided into two editions. It's priced at $499 per socket in the Standard edition, which performs the basics of hypervisor and virtual machine monitoring.

The $699 Pro edition can also supply virtual machine user chargeback information. It can monitor the operation of the operating system of the physical server on which the hypervisor resides. It's also geared to maintain the high availability of running virtual machines by monitoring their critical resources and spotting potential problems. VFoglight Pro can send alerts to third-party management systems or receive alerts from them.

Both editions can be used to take advantage of customized rules or produce metrics displayed in customized dashboards and views.

Vizioncore, a unit of Quest Software, also upgraded vOptimizer Pro, a product that automates the matching of a Windows virtual machine disk space to its actual needs, instead of its original allocation. It's common for virtual machines to receive an overallocation of disk to keep the VMs' operations on the safe side. But once such over allocation becomes routine for dozens or hundreds of virtual machines, the overallocated resources remain idle and potentially wasted.

"Typically 50% to 80% of a virtual machine's footprint is unused space allocated at the initial point of provisioning," said Page.

VOptimizer can inspect the virtual machine's file system and, based on usage, allow an IT administrator to resize its storage partition to more realistically reflect the VM's needs. A VM assigned 50 GB of storage can typically be reduced to 25 GB without impeding its operation. At $5 per gigabyte, the savings amounts to $125 per VM. In many cases, storage is the most expensive resource being allocated to a virtual machine, "but customers continue to rely on a lot of educated guess work to predict their storage requirements," Page said.

VOptimizer Pro can also streamline the Windows guest operating system of a virtual machine, giving it a smaller footprint when stored. Smaller VMs mean more efficient copying, migration, storage, and reactivation of virtual machines, Page said. VOptimizer Pro is priced at $299 per socket.

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