As competitors move in on its coveted territory, VMware is launching upgrades of its leading virtualization products and has formed an alliance to help bolster its growth.
On Tuesday, VMware, Palo Alto, Calif., unveiled significant upgrades of its flagship server, ESX 2.5, and the Virtual Center companion platform that allows customers to manage farms of ESX servers.
VMware's ESX 2.5, which is available now, offers advanced storage features, automated installation, expanded support for rack and blade servers from Dell, Hewlett-Packard and IBM, and expanded guest operating system support, according to VMware.
The company Tuesday also announced Virtual Center 1.2 and the VMware Virtual Infrastructure Software Development Kit. These products add support for the new VMware ESX 2.5 that will enable management of virtual machines using SAN transparency and ease management of clustered virtual machines, the company said.
As VMware refines the capabilities of these offerings, the vendor announced last week a major strategic alliance with Oracle, which also competes heavily against VMware competitor Microsoft.