VKernel moves into the cloud with vOperations Suite 4

VMworld may be owned and operated by VMware, but the largest virtualization show on earth isn’t limited to VMware technologies, no matter how hard it tries at times.

VKernel, a longtime VMware ecosystem partner, announced and is displaying at the show its latest virtualization management application, vOperations Suite 4 (vOPS). The new vOPS suite is designed to provide operational clarity for cloud operators and enterprise data centers. But like others in VMware’s partner ecosystem, VKernel is introducing support for other hypervisor platforms in order to differentiate itself from VMware-owned products. In this case, support for Microsoft Hyper-V is once again getting the nod.

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According to the company, this latest release introduces full Hyper-V integration, a new visualization engine, and a VM cost index to provide clarity into performance, capacity, and cost across data centers, resources, and hypervisors.

Bryan Semple, chief marketing officer at VKernel, told InfoWorld that he believes the world is becoming more and more heterogeneous, driven by operating systems that align more closely with specific hypervisors, applications that are certified to run only on specific hypervisors, hypervisor licensing models with dramatically different cost structures and models, data center consolidations, and hybrid cloud adoptions.

All that heterogeneous talk sounds good. But let’s face it, no matter which way you try to slice it, VMware is still the dominant player in the server virtualization market. But if the world is shifting to a more heterogeneous virtualization environment, as Semple suggests, VKernel wants to be ready to help manage it. As well as adding support for the obvious choice of Microsoft Hyper-V, VKernel is looking further down the road by announcing Q4 support for Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV).

“Red Hat is a niche player according to Gartner,” said Semple. “But what was interesting was their prediction that Red Hat would move to visionary as they expand their vision for virtualization especially with their new CloudForms vision and creation of the Open Virtualization Alliance.”

With additional hypervisor support, VKernel is well positioned to move beyond the virtual data center and into the cloud. To further that move, vOPS 4 adds a new virtualization Cost Index (vCI) that identifies the cost-effectiveness of each VM and stack ranks it against other VMs in the environment. The vCI evaluates the underlying hardware, the resources consumed by the VM, and the VM/host density. Unlike simple chargeback methods that only report on costs incurred by an individual VM, the vCI delivers a relative stack ranking of virtual machines costs corrected for VM density to easily identify which VMs are costing IT the most to operate. This is a valuable feature and should help organizations with their transition to a private cloud.

VKernel vOperations Suite 4 addresses three main challenges and adds the following new functionality:

1. Enhanced visualization

• Environment-wide visibility for performance, capacity, and costs
• Smart Business Views to help auto-organize VMs
• Configurable dashboards so each user can tailor their own specific environment view

2. Hypervisor agnosticism

• Multihypervisor integration — Hyper-V and vSphere VMs can be grouped together for reporting and operations
• Full Microsoft Hyper-V Support — vOPS can be installed as a VMDK for vSphere or a VHD for Hyper-V
• RHEV support expected in Q4 2011

3. Cost optimization

• VM costs are based on three drivers: hardware costs, resource usage, and VM density
• A cost index identifies expensive VMs

VKernel is showing off vOPS 4 at VMworld in Las Vegas at booth No. 1027. If you can’t make it to the show to see it in action, there is also a free 30-day trial download. Pricing starts at $299 per socket per application.

This article, “VKernel moves into the cloud with vOperations Suite 4,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Follow the latest developments in virtualization at InfoWorld.com. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.