CA Aligns With Cisco, VMware To Manage Cloud

CA  is broadening a set of management tools to allow them to address virtualized data centers and realize their potential as private clouds.

In the process, CA is backing the Cisco/VMware alliance that pairs Cisco's hardwired, virtual switch with VMware's vSphere 4 virtual machine management. Cisco is entering the blade market on the strength of its ability to offload the function of VMware's virtual switch in the ESX hypervisor to a switch external to its blade server, therefore improving the server's performance in hosting virtual machines.

Large amounts of network or storage traffic demands much of the hypervisor's attention as its software switch tries to cope with the flow.

On Monday CA announced it will provide comprehensive management services for vSphere 4 and Cisco's Nexus 1000V distributed virtualized switches.

CA will broaden its CA Spectrum Infrastructure Manager, which assesses infrastructure operation; CA Spectrum Automation Manager, which provisions servers based on policies; and CA eHealth Performance Manager so that they can view, assess and manage physical and virtual servers, their network environments, and the databases and communications on which they depend. All three are being enhanced to support vSphere 4, VMware's virtual machine infrastructure management system, and Nexus 1000V.