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Cradle To Grave, Baby: Page 2 of 2

Data center automation tools are nothing new; Altiris, Opsware,Tivoli and others came to market for a reason. Old-guard product lines are working to incorporate VM management and automation into existing solutions. Startups are addressing automation needs for large VMware customers. Some companies are working to develop cross-hypervisor automation for heterogeneous shops. You know customers are going to want to manage ESX and Hyper-V (at a minimum) from one console. If it was me, I'd want to manage all my virtual and physical servers from the same console. I don't think I'm alone.

When I spoke with Erik Wrobel of VMware last week, we kept coming back to the concept of a "data center OS." Life cycle management (from any vendor) is key to that model. Offering LCM as an add-on should help VMware further differentiate ESX from the Xen-ers, Microsoft, and other VM platforms hoping to get a toehold in the enterprise. I wouldn't write off strenghtening relationships between third-party VM management vendors, OEMs, and other virtualization alternatives just yet. The road ahead is still long ...

Shops running ESX 3.5 with Virtual Center can jump in now and download the eval of Lifecycle Manager here.

Pricing wasn't announced in the release and my early-morning chat with a rep from VMware's toll free number was not fruitful. She didn't have an updated product list yet; I'll update this post when I get numbers.