Data Center Management Goes Virtual

With virtual servers sprouting like weeds in large organizations, a new wave of data center management tools aims to make it easier to control them -- and the applications they touch.

Symantec today beefed up Veritas Server Foundation, adding features for managing applications across storage and virtual server domains, regardless of platform. (See Symantec Expands Family and Symantec Intros Veritas Foundation.) The notable addition is an Application Director that manages and monitors applications across physical servers, virtual servers, and storage networks.

Earlier this week, CA upgraded Unicenter Advanced Systems Management (ASM) to let admins manage and create virtual machines from one console. (See CA Releases Unicenter.)

Both Symantec and CA allow users to set policies to control applications across virtual servers and balance workloads to allocate more CPU and memory resources to higher priority applications.

Both upgrades come two weeks after Opsware brought out its Virtualization Director to manage physical and virtual servers. (See Opsware Intros Solution.)The overriding theme here? For all the advantages of virtualization, the proliferation of virtual servers can create management headaches. That's especially the case across heterogeneous platforms.

"With virtual servers, virtual storage, and virtual networks, management is the key," says analyst Greg Schulz of The StorageIO Group. "The reason you put virtualization in is to eliminate complexity, not to add more layers. So now you have to virtualize the management. That means the more your management tools can go across technology domains, the better for eliminating complexity."

Those domains include databases and other business applications, as well as storage and physical and virtual servers.

The move toward centralized management of all this has been underway for awhile. It was the impetus behind EMC's acquisition of Smarts, for instance. (See EMC Casts Wider Net and EMC Gets Smarts.) Hewlett-Packard has also been integrating its OpenView and Storage Essentials storage management capabilities. (See HP Plans HW/SW Upgrades.)

So there's a division between management products that's likely to persist for awhile. "Vendors are coming down this path from different directions," Schulz says. "At some point they may converge, or some may misconverge and miss it."Whether they hit or miss depends on several things. First, how broad is the vendor's support for applications and devices? How well their management tools understand all the types of apps -- databases, virtual servers, and so on -- is another key. Software-only vendors such as CA, Opsware, and Symantec argue they can manage heterogeneous platforms better because they are hardware agnostic.

The ultimate goal is to allow customers to manage more resources with fewer tools. "There are so many point tools out there," says Matt Fairbanks, Symantec senior director of product marketing. "We're trying to replace dozens of point products with one tool."

Still, nobody has that complete tool yet for managing storage and servers. Despite supporting heterogeneous hardware in their management solutions, Symantec and CA still have distinct server and storage management applications, and it's unlikely they will merge any time soon.

Symantec did add some integration with its new release. The Server Foundation capabilities reach into storage devices and applications, and organizations can use Application Director with Veritas Storage Foundation or Server Foundation.

But Server Foundation and Storage Foundation still have separate management consoles. Fairbanks says Symantec plans eventually to offer one console for a high-level admin, such as VP of data center infrastructure.Also, as with just about all storage platforms, there's the issue of building in security. While Veritas Server Foundation has technology picked up from acquisitions of Jareva and Relicore, it doesn't include any of Symantec's security technology. (See Veritas Gets Precise, Veritas Picks Up Precise, and Symantec & Veritas: It's a Deal.)

"We're looking at the possibilities now," Fairbanks says, stopping short of disclosing specifics. "We are working with [Symantec] security teams now."

Dave Raffo, News Editor, Byte and Switch