VKernel, a subsidiary of Quest Software and the award-winning provider of enterprise-class performance and capacity management products for virtualized data centers and cloud environments, announced today the expansion of its award-winning vOperations Suite (also referred to as vOPS). Now available as part of the vOperations Suite are products from VKernel’s parent company, Quest Software. The enhanced vOPS product suite offers a single solution for VM administrators to manage all infrastructure areas related to their virtualized data centers and cloud environments. Specifically, the unified vOperations Suite extends monitoring capabilities to other hardware areas and layers of the infrastructure including the storage area network (SAN), the guest OS inside a VM and physical servers that have not been virtualized. This unified offering bolsters Quest Software’s position as the leading independent virtualization management company.

Virtualization administrators have long searched for a data center management system to gain visibility across the many layers that make up a virtualized environment: from storage array to guest OS. Previous attempts to gain this holistic visibility have either required multiple vendors, or have involved complex large-scale management platforms that are time consuming and not cost efficient. The enhanced vOPS product line provides VM administrators with an out-of-the-box solution to monitor, capacity plan, chargeback, report on and optimize their entire virtual environment that can be set up in minutes.

“Virtualized environments are complex, multi-tiered systems made up of several hardware components and abstraction layers,” says Bernd Harzog, The Virtualization Practice. “Because resource usage is interconnected, a failure at any point in the infrastructure can cause issues in other areas. The only way to pinpoint where an issue is originating is to have visibility into every infrastructure area that constitutes the virtualized environment.”

The new vOperations Suite is built around two broad product lines: vOPS Server and vOPS Storage.

vOPS Server focuses on server management with three editions:

• Explorer (Free) – Designed to assess the health of a virtualized environment, the Explorer Edition immediately identifies VMs, hosts and datastores that are suffering performance, capacity and efficiency issues. Users can upgrade to a free trial of the Standard Edition to remediate any issues identified with the click of a button.
• Standard ($549/socket) – An easy to install, rapid time to value application that works “out-of-the-box” to provide virtual server performance analysis, capacity management, optimization and chargeback. vOPS Server Standard Edition(formerly VKernel vOPS) will detect issues in VMs, identify root cause and provide remediation steps that can be automatically implemented.
• Enterprise ($799/socket) – Adds the former Quest Software vFoglight product on to the Standard Edition. Enterprise allows data centers to extend near real-time monitoring into applications such as SQL Server and Microsoft Exchange, the guest OS and non-virtualized servers. The Enterprise edition is vastly scalable and can manage tens of thousands of VMs in a single pane of glass that includes highly configurable dashboards and environment characteristics.

vOPS Storage focuses on storage management with two editions:

• Monitor ($499/socket) - For VM administrators who require deep visibility into the SAN or are also the storage administrators, vOPS Storage Monitor visualizes the topology from VM to disk. Formerly vFoglight Storage, this solution displays the SAN and the interconnection between various components highlighting where issues are present and the root causes to the problems.
• vOptimizer ($299/socket) –The former Quest Software vOptimizer Pro detects VMs that are running out of disk space, are over-allocated in storage or have misaligned disk block partitions. All of these issues can then be instantly remediated with automation capabilities.

“The new vOPS product family provides unparalleled visibility into both non-virtualized and virtual environments,” said Bryan Semple, CMO, VKernel. “Combining market leading products from our parent company, Quest Software, with VKernel’s award-winning vOperations Suite allows both companies to provide virtual administrators the ability to proactively manage their entire virtualized environment at a price point that won’t break the budget.”

“Quest Software’s acquisition of VKernel is a win-win for all our customers,” said Shayne Higdon, SVP & GM, User Workspace Management and Monitoring, Quest Software. “VKernel is a pioneer in offering solutions that allow virtualization administrators to ensure performance and balance costs in their virtualized network environments. The enhanced vOperations Suite will help these customers vastly simplify their day-to-day operations and bolster the support that Quest Software can offer a data center.”

General Availability
The new vOPS product family is available now for a 30-day trial download from www.vkernel.com/download. vOPS products are available from http://www.vkernel.com and Quest partners worldwide.