Virtual Machine Sprawl? ToutVirtual Touts a Fix

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Looking to cement its place in the red-hot market for virtualization management software, ToutVirtual introduced products that helps customers monitor and manage the performance of virtual machines.

Managing server virtualization software is a big plus at a time when long-time users of virtualization are weary of virtual machine sprawl: in the process of paring physical servers, some organizations create different pain points by allowing their virtual machine deployment to get out of control.

That’s where VirtualIQ Pro comes in. The software sits atop any virtual infrastructure and uses remote agents to collect and sift through infrastructure data so that customers don’t have to install any software agents on their physical server, said ToutVirtual Chief Strategy Officer and co-founder Bakul Mehta.

The product’s Web-based console allows IT administrators to automate virtual machines with policy configurations, determine resource usage for how much CPU, memory, disk and I/O are used; and generate real-time reports.
Additional perks in VirtualIQ Pro include real time root-cause analysis and performance management for the host and virtual machine.

Mehta said ToutVirtual products also have a vendor-agnostic bonus that appeals to customers.

Vendors such as VMware and Microsoft make products that manage the virtual machines their server virtualization infrastructure creates to help run more operating systems on fewer physical machines. But those products are tailored for those companies’ specific environments, or may be too costly for budget-conscious businesses.

VirtualIQ Pro doesn’t discriminate or exclude, managing Windows- or Linux-based virtualization platforms from VMware, Microsoft, XenSource and Novell.

“We decided to have a virtualization infrastructure management product that does all of the virtual management products whether it’s VMware, Microsoft or Novell,” said Mehta. This, Mehta said, has paid off.

For example, VMware’s VirtualCenter manages virtual machines created with ESX Server, but Mehta said ToutVirtual customers choose VirtualIQ Pro because it manages various environments and is not as cost-prohibitive for smaller businesses. Microsoft and XenSource manage their own virtual machines, but lack the performance management and capacity planning tools VirtualIQ Pro has.

The VirtualIQ Pro software package scales to an unlimited number of CPUs and virtual machines, while VirtualIQ Pro software appliances are packaged as a virtual machine and can manage up to 10 CPUs or up to 50 virtual machines.

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