VMware has launched its Lifecycle Manager product aimed at IT managers looking for help in managing virtual machines.
As well as control over virtual machines the software helps managers to measure their operation and enables them to charge back to appropriate business units.
VMware says its latest offering can help reduce the manual and repetitive tasks that often introduce errors in virtual-machine lifecycle management. It can also enable businesses to comply with IT policies and standards as they asssign cost metrics to specific virtual-machine deployments and resource pools. These metrics can then be assigned to specific business groups and tied in to existing financial systems.
"Virtualisation deployments are becoming more widespread and, as such, the complexity of managing these resources can increase as these deployments grow. VMware Lifecycle Manager tackles issues around the general provisioning, operation and decommissioning of virtual machines by building upon the inherent strengths of virtual infrastructure," Reza Malekzadeh, senior director of products and marketing, EMEA at VMware told ZDNet.co.uk on Wednesday.
"VMware virtual machines encapsulate applications and operating systems in such a way that they become extremely portable and manageable, allowing our customers to introduce far greater levels of automation into IT processes such as service delivery," added Malekzadeh.
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According to VMware, users of Lifecycle Manager can select from a pre-defined menu of virtual machines with different properties such as processor and memory. This standardisation allows infrastructure administrators to maintain control over the IT environment and minimise risk.
"A recent Enterprise Strategy Group survey of current and planned virtual server adopters showed that current users expect the number of their virtual machines will grow by 173 percent over the next two years," said Mark Bowker, industry analyst at ESG. "To handle this massive growth, VMware Lifecycle Manager delivers IT departments with a method to automate best practices by implementing a standardised approach for managing user requests for the provisioning of virtual machines."
VMware says that as virtual environments grow, automation tools are becoming a more critical area for IT management to focus on. As such, its Lifecycle Manager automates each step in the virtual machine lifecycle based on pre-defined policies.
