VKernel, now under the Dell flag, just released version 6.3 of the vOPS Server Explorer freeware suite.Next to the already present tools Environment Explorer, SearchMyVM Explorer, and vScope Explorer  they added two new utilities: Storage Explorer and Change Explorer.

Using the same analytics and advisory engine from the paid vOPS Server Standard product, all five of these utilities provide virtual administrators with a rapid assessment of the state of their environment, for free!

So what is Storage Explorer?

Storage Explorer assesses storage performance and capacity views across datastores and VMs that helps VM admins to get better visibility of their storage environment.

It has the following features:

• Identify critical datastore issues such as overcommitment, low capacity, high latency, VMFS version mismatch.
  Storage Explorer collects inventory and performance data from datastores and apply rules based on best practices to highlight if any critical conditions are found. Such examples includes overcommitment, low capacity and high latency. Other useful information includes VMFS version, storage path policy and number of VMs.
• Identify critical VM issues such as low available disk space, high latency and throughput
  Storage Explorer collects inventory and performance data from VMs and apply rules based on best practices to highlight if any critical conditions are found. Examples includes low available disk space, high latency and throughput.

(more…)

Storage and server teams have historically had difficulty working together and often end up “finger-pointing” to each other. Today vKernel/Quest released the new vFoglight Storage 2.0 which can perform end-to-end performance monitoring across the entire data path from application to disk. Many issues originate in storage, vFoglight Storage 2.0 can connect the server data to the storage array to determine what is causing the issue.

VMware announced a move towards tighter integration into EMC storage arrays for data collection at EMCWorld 2012. vFoglight Storage 2.0 currently delivers “out-of-the-box” support for multiple storage vendors already, fulfilling on VMware’s “vision”.

The new vFoglight Storage 2.0 introduces features and integration that enables application to disk performance monitoring. This will allow server and storage teams to literally work on the same page to troubleshoot, manage and plan for VM performance.

(more…)

During VMworld I had a nice fast paced interview with Mattias Sundling about why there are so many vGurus in the Netherlands, the future of Clouds, key takeaways from VMworld and IT trends in general.

Today vKernel released a new free utility for VMware admins within vOPS Server Explorer, called vKernel Environment Explorer. This new free utility provides a rapid assessment of the state of the virtual environment, helping quickly determine critical environment health statistics.

Environment Explorer can locate:

• Identify critical VM configuration errors such as memory limits and old snapshots that will affect performance;
• Performance bottlenecks caused by high CPU ready, memory swapping, device latency, and other causes;
• Detect inefficiency/waste created by VMs with CPU, memory and storage over allocation;
• Pinpoint oversubscription of CPU, memory and storage resources and whether the over-allocation is impacting performance;
• Find available capacity expressed as the number of VMs that can be deployed without causing performance bottlenecks.

Also included in your free download of Environment Explorer, you will have access to vScope Explorer and SearchMyVM Explorer. As a single virtual appliance download, vOPS Server Explorer offers these three powerful utilities in one.

As virtual environments become more dynamic and complex, just establishing whether or not an environment is under control can require a significant amount of data mining and manual calculation for the VM admin. With vKernel’s vOPS Server Explorer you can locate these issues quickly.

Last week I had the opportunity to sneak peak a new free tool made by VKernel named SearchMyVM Explorer. The tool is added to the vOPS Server Explorer tool and brings a long awaited and asked for feature designed to cut down time and effort in finding items in you virtual environment(s). It works very easy, you can search like you are used to in Google. Select if you want to search a VM, Resource pool, Host or Cluster with lots and lots of metrics.

This new utility provides a “Google-like” search into the virtual environment and complements the existing VM health visualization utility in vOPS Server Explorer.

The new search utility, SearchMyVM Explorer, indexes an environment‘s virtual machines, hosts, clusters, resource pools, files, snapshots, VMware tools, applications, and configuration information.

(more…)

On December 19th VKernel released version 4.5 of its vOps management software.

vOps 4.5 addresses the increasing volume of routine virtual machine management tasks in virtualized environments. This increase is caused by the enormous growth in the number of virtual machines. Nowadays we provision many more virtual servers than we ever had physical ones because they are easier and cheaper to deploy. All of these virtual machines require management tasks for maintenance.

The next step in virtualization is automation and vOPS 4.5 also cover this with the introduction of some new capabilities, like:

• New Automation Features
  vOPS’ virtual machine management automation capabilities are enhanced with auto-deletion of abandoned virtual machine images, auto-merging of unused snapshots, an additional automated remediation for performance issues and auto-calculation of future resource requirements;
• Automation Controls
  vOPS 4.5 also adds the ability to more finely control some automation processes. For example, virtual machines can be grouped, and then these groups set with minimum and maximum resource amounts that automated right-sizing will respect.

Additionally, vOps 4.5 introduces:

(more…)

December 9th was the day of the annual dutch VMUG event in Nieuwegein (NL). It was a great day with many interesting sessions, labs, great people to meet and of course the MonsterVM.

During the day Edwin and I had the chance to talk to Alex, Michal and Lauren from VKernel. Besides a sneak preview of vOps 4.5 we also did an interview with Alex about emerging virtualization management technologies, security resources, VMUG sessions of interest and new products featured.

You can check it out here:

Just 15 minutes ago I heard the ‘news’ that, last Wednesday, VKernel was acquired by Quest Software.

VKernel will continue to operate as an independent subsidiary of Quest, building, selling and marketing the same performance and capacity management solutions. So, it will be business as usual for VKernel, except the new VKernel will be turbo-charged with the backing of Quest.

For the current customers, nothing changes. The same team that has built, sold, and supported your products is still here. The main difference is that VKernel now has the financial backing and support of Quest Software.