VMTN Blog

Posted by Sushant Rao
Sr. Technology Alliance Manager

For years, we've been seeing that virtualization has become a major component of our customers’ datacenters.  As a result of the cost savings and improved management productivity compared to physical environments, they are standardizing on virtualization as a better way of computing.

For most companies, their end-to-end management processes cut across several technology domains and tools.  Therefore, virtual infrastructure needs to integrate with other management tools to deliver virtualization-smart management that takes advantage of the benefits of VMware virtualization.

One customer brought up provisioning as an example.  When a user wants to get an application deployed, they open a ticket with the service desk.  After the request has been approved, there is an automation process.  This process will provision a host, storage and the network if the current virtualized infrastructure doesn't have enough capacity.  At this point, VMware products would come into the process.  Lifecycle Manager is used to provision the VM and then the VM would be deployed and added to VMware Infrastructure.  Then, the service desk needs to be notified that the request has been completed. The whole process covers a number of different products and tools

In addition to protecting their investments in existing management tools, better integration with VMware virtualization means easier training for their staff and more efficient processes.

So, what is VMware doing?

VMware has had open APIs for integrated management for some time now, but recently we expanded our investment by creating the VMware Ready Management Initiative and defining vCenter Extensibility.  vCenter Extensibility provides structure for these APIs (which interface should be used to do what), while the VMware Ready Management  Initiative defines a qualification program for integrated solutions with partners (i.e, VMware Ready Management Solutions) and a roadmap for future management capabilities (i.e. incorporating B-Hive and other new products).

Taking a look back at the customer's provisioning example earlier, how would the VMware Ready Management Initiative make a difference?  Well, with better integration, the systems for service desk, provisioning of the virtualized infrastructure (if necessary) and provisioning of the VM will work cooperatively.  The whole process can be automated as approval of the request kicks-off the systems that provision the host, storage and network, which in turn kick-off Lifecycle Manager to provision a VM.  In addition, once the VM has been added to VirtualCenter, the service desk will be automatically notified that the VM has been created.

The main benefit to customers is that they will have a standardized, automated management process across multiple types of infrastructure.  An ancillary benefit is that companies will have an easier time selecting partner products for evaluation as well as deploying these products.

We've talked with a number of companies about VMware Ready Management Solutions.  One company in particular, a large, national healthcare company is looking forward to this initiative because they feel it will simplify their management processes, reduce the number of products they needed to evaluate as well as focus their testing on the functional aspects of the products.

Please follow these links for more information about the VMware Ready Management Initiative and vCenter and the press release.