Emulex Corporation today announced the general availability of VMPilot, a new management software application for Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 environments. VMPilot works with Emulex LightPulse 4Gb/s Host Bus Adapters (HBAs) to simplify the creation and migration of Microsoft Virtual Server-based virtual machines attaching to storage area networks (SANs).

"Working closely with Microsoft, we have delivered an innovative application to streamline the deployment of data center virtualization," said Mike Smith, executive vice president of worldwide marketing, Emulex. "Designed to enable virtual machine migration without reconfiguring storage or copying files, VMPilot delivers time- and cost-savings to our customers."

VMPilot also easily migrates virtual machines to alternate physical servers while maintaining SAN attachment, and also allows storage administrators to comply with service level agreements. For example, HBOS Plc., one of the United Kingdom's leading mortgage and retail financial services providers, is implementing a virtualization strategy across the network, server and storage infrastructure of its distributed client/server environment.

"VMPilot plays an important role in the ongoing production roll-out of Microsoft Virtual Server," said Paul Winfield, infrastructure developer, HBOS plc. "Leveraging Emulex HBAs throughout our data centers, in conjunction with its VMPilot application, we gain the ability to implement SAN management best practices across our virtualization environment, including establishing zoning to isolate each virtual machine and its storage, along with support for easy migration of virtual machines as needed."

HBOS plc. has nearly two petabytes of installed storage supporting more than 1,000 servers and two SANs operating at different sites. The bank is committed to containing IT costs while providing reliable and responsive service across its business operations, which span the major financial centers of the world.

"Partnering with Emulex to deploy VMPilot for Microsoft Virtual Server ensures our customers can achieve hardware consolidation and improved system utilization, without sacrificing storage area network best practices," said Mike Neil, general manager, at Microsoft Corp. "We look forward to further integration between VMPilot and Microsoft's System Center Virtual Machine Manager."

VMPilot provides a unique virtualized HBA connection based on industry-standard N-Port ID Virtualization (NPIV). A simple wizard creates virtual machines with SAN connectivity using virtual HBA ports that work like physical HBAs. This enables administrators to maintain all the benefits of SAN-based storage including use of standard SAN management tools and best practices, such as fabric zoning at the virtual machine level. For more information on VMPilot and Emulex LightPulse Virtual HBA technology, visit http://www.emulex.com/products/hba/vmpilot/ds.jsp.

Emulex is demonstrating VMPilot in booth No. 230 at this week's Microsoft Management Summit (MMS) in San Diego, California. Additionally, Penton Media's Windows IT Pro and SQL Server Magazine announced that Emulex VMPilot was named a finalist for the Best of MMS 2007 Awards.