VMware Lab Manager 2.5 Reaches Public Beta

VMware, continuing its move up the virtualization application stack, is getting closer to releasing the latest version of its virtual lab management application – VMware Lab Manager 2.5. The company acquired Lab Manager from Akimbi last year and have been updating it ever since.

If you aren’t familiar with the product or the idea behind virtual lab management, you should check out this informative white paper, Virtual Lab Automation, which describes it perfectly.

Lab Manager 2.5 has introduced quite a few new features in its latest version (build 212):

• Support for ESX Server 3.0.2 – Lab Manager also continues to support ESX Server 3.0.1.

• Support for 64-bit – Create, deploy and manage virtual machine configurations with 64-bit guest operating systems.

• Solaris 10 support – Adds support virtual machines running x86-based versions of Solaris 10 x86 edition.

• SMP support – Lab Manager now supports virtual machines with multiple CPUs.

• Support for NFS and iSCSI storage as both virtual machine and media storage – Previously, NFS storage could only serve as media storage.

• Automated server pool cleanup – You can set policies to automate the undeploy and delete operations for unused virtual machines.

• Managed Server maintenance mode – You can redeploy all virtual machines on a Managed Server system to other Managed Server systems.

• Storage maintenance tools – Lab Manager provides a graphic and tabular view of disk space usage to support maintenance of datastore content. From one location, you can perform various operations at the virtual machine level and assess disk space that would become available if you delete a virtual machine and its “hidden” internal nodes.

• Support for Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 and ASP.NET version 2.0.5.727

You can register for VMware’s Lab Manager beta program, here.