VMware recently announced the general availability of VMware vCenter Infrastructure Navigator 1.1 on April 26, 2012 – release notes.
vCenter Infrastructure Navigator (VIN), was first introduced as part of the vCenter Operations Management Suite (Enterprise & Enterprise + Editions) in October of 2011.
VIN provides application dependency visibility to applications virtualized on the vSphere platform. VIN is another great example of how the vSphere platform can be leveraged through both the ease of implementation (via an appliance) and automated discovery of all the applications virtualized on vSphere. The value extends in VIN’s ability to easily and automatically detect, discover, map and present the application characteristics and dependencies through both vSphere Web Client integration and visual maps and searchable tables.
vSphere Web Client integration
Application discovery and mapping is fully automated and updated on near real-time intervals through leveraging VMware tools – thus no agent deployment is required.
The integrated “Navigator” tab provides a list of discovered services/apps giving the user the ability to view apps in a Virtual Center (VC) down to a VM – also providing filtering capabilities. VIN also provides integration into Site Recovery Manager (SRM), providing visibility into the apps that are part of a “protection group”. This level of visibility ensures a greater level of protection by understanding the impact of all the VM dependencies within and one hop away from vSphere.
SRM – Protection group / plan integration
Mapped applications allow the user to view and investigate both incoming and outgoing dependencies within the VC and one hop from the VC to a physical server, or even residing on another VC.
Additionally, VIN now supports naming of undiscovered application services that are either; not defined in the knowledge base, or are custom applications.
In summary, VIN provides the additional level of application visibility required to aptly ensure performance and uptime as well as reduce risk across your mission critical vApps and virtualized application environment. VIN is part of the vCenter Operations Management Enterprise & Enterprise + Suites, and more information can be found on the vCenter Infrastructure Navigator homepage.
Ben Scheerer
Twitter: @benscheerer
