VMWare And HP Announce Co-Developed Plan

VMWare and HP's co-development and OEM arrangement and  integration of HP Discovery and DependencyMapping (DDM) software into vCenter is a positive move by VMWare to helpadministrators get control of server sprawl and manage moves, adds, and changeswhile integration with HP's Client Automation brings VMWare ThinAppapplications under the same management umbrella as other systems. Of the two, theco-development of HP's DDM will have the biggest bang for VMWareadministrators.

VMWare says ConfigControl will be sometime in 2010. ErikWrobel, director of Product Management with VMWare said the co-development hasbeen ongoing for 6 months and they are starting to show the software to keycustomers to get initial feed back. "It's too soon to commit to release datesor licencing", Wrobel said.

 VMWare's vCenterConfigControl module clips into vCenter and allows administrators discover anddesign application topologies, declare dependencies between virtual machines, andstart and stop groups of machines as a group and in a particular order. HP'sDDM software provides the application discovery and management framework todeclare the dependences and interconnections while vCenter manages the virtualhosts, including keeping a history of changes to virtual machines.

"For huge IT shops, or decentralized IT shops with manydifferent sites, serving out many different applications across a wide range ofphysical servers and SAN's, it get tough to visualize, document and controlwhat the dependencies are between storage, server, application and network,"  contributing editor RandyGeorge said. "HP's DDM software fills in a critical capability gap for VMWare."ConfigControl will be deployed as a virtual application, aVAPP, which is a package of virtual appliance images preconfigured to work as aunit. HP's DDM software will be one virtual appliance within the ConfigControl VAPP.The inclusion of DDM means that once ConfigControl is installed and configured,it can discover the existing VM's and the applications that are running and populatea repository. Items in the repository are used by administrators to create the dependenciesand application topologies.  "Unlikeother products," Ramin Sayar, VP of products, HP Software & Solutions, "throughour tight integration with vCenter, we can get real time updates on changes tovirtual machines, including moves. We don't have to wait for a poll." Sayaralso said that other HP's Universal CMDB can push and pull data fromConfigControl allowing other HP products like Service Manager and BusinessService Automation take advantage of the VMWare integration.

HP is also integrating HP's Client Automation Service withVMWares ThinApp, though the integration is more on HP's side providing theability to manage ThinApp like any other desktop. The integration should reducemanagement overhead for those organizations using ThinApp and HP's software.