Virtualization Automation – A Proper Virtual World

ToutVirtual Announces VirtualIQ Pro 3

January 16th, 2009

Single, platform-agnostic console provides integrated policy engine for all virtualization platforms
Carlsbad, California – January 13, 2009 – ToutVirtual, an emerging leader in virtualization intelligence, optimization and performance-management software for virtual computing infrastructures, today announced the availability of VirtualIQ Pro 3 (VirtualIQ Pro). VirtualIQ Pro is a management and automation program designed to support customers in every stage of virtualization deployment. The wide range of features helps users from the planning phase to established virtual server rooms running hundreds of virtual machines (VMs). VirtualIQ Pro is available as a software solution, and as a quick-start for new users, ToutVirtual is offering a fully featured, free version of VirtualIQ Pro which supports up to 5 CPU sockets or 25 virtual machines. To download a free copy of ToutVirtual’s VirtualIQ Pro, please visit http://www.toutvirtual.com/downloads/downloads.php

VirtualIQ Pro, with a new user interface, offers the tools to manage the unique challenges that IT faces at each stage. The integrated functionality of VirtualIQ Pro provides server virtualization assessment, asset management, performance management, capacity management, and reporting in one product that is simple to install, deploy and use. VirtualIQ Pro offers a unique value proposition since the same console is capable of supporting Citrix, Microsoft, Oracle, VMware, and open-source Xen virtualization platforms.

“ToutVirtual’s VirtualIQ Pro console addresses a very important need in the support of heterogeneous virtualization environments,” says Andi Mann, research director at Enterprise Management Associates. “In an easy-to-use, functional and affordable interface, VirtualIQ Pro helps users get greater value from virtualization deployments by integrating, in a single console, several core disciplines like capacity planning, load balancing and automated VM management.”

“ToutVirtual’s products have helped us manage our physical and virtual IT infrastructure,” says Rakesh Shah, vice president of IT operations for eGain, Inc., the leading provider of multi-channel customer service and knowledge management software. “We have a heterogeneous IT environment with different virtual platforms and various stages of virtualization. ToutVirtual’s VirtualIQ Pro has provided us with a unified console to control server capacity, manage incidents, create and execute policies and ultimately optimize our virtualization environment.”
 
Users face different challenges in each phase of their virtualization deployments – design, deploy, and deliver. For instance, in the design stage, the issues are physical-to-virtual (P-V) migration, calculating ROI, platform selection, how to decide which applications get consolidated on which hosts, resource optimization, and so forth. In the deploy stage, the challenges are managing available server capacity, controlling virtual server sprawl, performance optimization, and resource dependency just to name a few. In the deliver stage, the hurdles are managing heterogeneous virtual environments, service-delivery optimization, policy-based actions like spinning a new virtual machine, and more. VirtualIQ Pro provides a single, integrated console to optimize each of these scenarios.

“The proliferation of virtualization platforms and the ever growing number of virtual applications creates a strong demand for a single, platform- and hypervisor-agnostic management and automation console that can address all the customer’s needs – whether the customer is in the planning stage or already in the deployment stage,” says Vipul Pabari, chief technology officer of ToutVirtual. “With VirtualIQ Pro we are responding to this demand with an affordable, flexible, complete and easy-to-use management and automation tool.”

VirtualIQ Pro 3 comes with the following new features:

• Physical and virtual asset and inventory discovery – provides audit trail of additions, moves and removal of assets. Supports both non-virtualized and virtualized physical server assets, virtual machine assets, and resource pools.
• Single, integrated console – simplifies IT operations to manage physical servers and virtual machines. Supports multiple management functions such as performance management, capacity planning, capacity maximization, capacity forecasting, and visibility reports.
• Physical to virtual migration (P-to-V) analyzer – allows IT to discover virtualization server candidates, perform multiple “what-if” workload placement analysis for virtual machine (VM) density planning. Optional green IT analysis and forecasting for virtualization return-on-investment (ROI) analysis available.
• Virtualization analytics – provides IT quick incident management to identify where resource contention or bottlenecks are within the dynamic virtual infrastructure. Supports Host-Host, Host-VM, Host-HostGroup, Inter-VM and Intra-VM resource dependency analysis.
• Hypervisor-agnostic policy engine for virtualization automation – allows IT to simplify and lower the total cost of ownership of their virtual infrastructure. Supports “crawl-walk-run” automation modes, event-triggered automation, and time-triggered (scheduled) automation. New virtualization actions include (cold migration), move VM and live VM migration.
• Multiple hypervisor (Type-I and Type-II) support for heterogeneous support of the market’s top virtualization platforms.
• Secure virtualization with role-based access – allows IT departments to define different user roles within the web portal and to customize rights. Supports multiple roles, multiple authentication models: stand-alone, Active Directory and OpenLDAP.

Pricing, Availability and Platforms Supported

VirtualIQ Pro 3 is available now. VirtualIQ Pro software supports unlimited number of CPU sockets and unlimited virtual machines. Several pricing levels for VirtualIQ Pro are available based on CPU socket and VM support. As a quick-start or test drive, VirtualIQ Pro for up to 5 CPU sockets or 25 virtual machines is available for free download. Pricing starts at $199 per CPU socket per year. Additional volume pricing is available by contacting ToutVirtual directly. To download a free copy of ToutVirtual’s VirtualIQ Pro, please visit http://www.toutvirtual.com/downloads/downloads.php

VirtualIQ Pro is hypervisor agnostic and can be installed on either Windows or Linux OS and supports the following virtual platforms:

• VMware ESX, VMware ESXi, VMware Server on Windows, VMware Server on Linux, VMware GSX Server on Windows, VMware GSX Server on Linux
• Citrix XenServer
• Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2
• Xen on Novell SUSE Enterprise 10
• Oracle Oracle VM

Entry Filed under: ToutVirtual, Virtual System Management