DynamicOps VRM Reclaims Inactive Virtual Machines

DynamicOps, the virtual machine management spinout from Credit Suisse, has introduced a system that automatically identifies and reclaims inactive or abandoned virtual machines to gain their resources.

DynamicOps Virtual Resource Manager Release 3.2 helps companies use their virtual infrastructure more efficiently, reducing the need for IT to seek out unused virtual machines and identify their users or former users.

"A company with 1,000 virtual machines and 10% inactive or abandoned can expect to save $80,000 to $100,000 on capital expenditures from automated resource reclamation," CEO Richard Krueger said in the announcement of VRM release 3.2.

Virtual Resource Manager is a cross-vendor virtual machine management system that the Credit Suisse IT department developed over a period of three years to manage the variety of virtual machine hypervisors that it found itself using. It can provision and decommission virtual machines created through VMware ESX Server, Citrix Systems XenServer, Microsoft Hyper-V, and Sun Microsystems Solaris 10 Containers. It manages all types of virtual machines through a single console.

DynamicOps has added a Developer's Toolkit to VRM 3.2, which allows customers to develop plug-in modules to perform additional management tasks. It can be used to set workflows to update an in-house patch management database, for example.

That would allow an existing systems management system to check and see that virtual machines were using updated and patched versions of operating systems and applications.

VRM has added new Linux support to allow automated installation of the operating system as part of a virtual machine and customization of the operating system through Red Hat Kickstart configuration or Novel's SUSE Auto YaST configuration.

DynamicOps in Burlington, Mass., was spun out a year ago as an independent company with venture capital backing. Kreuger is a veteran of storage startup Incipient and EMC.

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