Software firm Tripwire has launched vWire, a VMware management tool designed to reduce downtime in virtualized environments by allowing administrators to monitor configurations and correlate data.
The platform, introduced on Tuesday, could dramatically reduce the time and risk involved in virtualization, said Chris Ingle, a consulting director at analyst firm IDC.
"This is the first time it's been possible to do this kind of root-cause analysis and troubleshooting in a virtualized environment, although there are probably similar tools in the high-end suites from Tivoli and HP, if you know where to look," Ingle said.
Tripwire says vWire can monitor thousands of logs and performance indicators in VMware and provide tailored reports through a single management console. Users can define parameters for alerts and integrate the resulting data with service management applications.
The key benefit of vWire is providing administrators with a simple way of monitoring a highly complex environment, according to Dwayne Melancon, vice president of business development with Tripwire.
"We had a customer who spent two days trying to resolve an issue on the phone with VMware. It turned out there was a problem with SCSI bus resets. Yes, that information is available in a log in VMware, the question is do you have the time to spend finding it?" Melancon said.
vWire only supports VMware, although Melancon said releases in the next six to nine months would support other virtualisation platforms. Tripwire will also provide a library of shell scripts that users can download to perform configuration and other changes, which will integrate with vWire and VMware.
"We'll also be running an online forum, so if you've developed a great script to manage a cluster of servers, you can share that with other administrators," Melancon added.
Although Tripwire is first to market with vWire, other vendors will almost certainly follow suit over the next 12 months, according to Roy Illsley, a senior research analyst with Butler Group.
"This kind of thing will be standard next year, as all the vendors start to look at the issue of integrating service desk and service management with systems management and virtualization," Illsley said.
"Microsoft and VMware are definitely moving in that direction, and I think in the next quarter or two we'll see similar tools emerging from niche providers like Quest and FrontRange."
vWire is available for immediate download. The management console is free for a limited period, and licenses are priced at about US$290 per CPU socket.
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