Gale Tweaks Automated Resource Provisioning Tools

According to a new IDC whitepaper sponsored by EMC, cloud computing and virtualization changes the risk profile of information assets. The on-demand, automated resource provisioning, and highly abstracted relationships that are inherent to cloud computing present technical challenges that must be addressed. Looking to address these challenges, Gale Technologies is upgrading its GaleForce and Lab Manager resource provisioning solutions for physical and cloud infrastructures. The toolmaker says the latest enhancements offer new levels of do-it-yourself automated resource management, and enable a seamless transition to private cloud infrastructures.

A superset of Lab Manager and supporting end-to-end provisioning of both physical and virtual resources, across computing, networking, and storage technologies, GaleForce 5.3 now provides expanded virtualization support - Virtual Machine (VM) scaling and new resource clustering capabilities. It also features enhanced design or authoring of topologies. Link Feasibility Assist enables users to set up and reconfigure automated patch panels as well as VLAN connectivity for dynamic reconfiguration of physical and virtual environments. Users can also substitute or swap resources in sessions that have been confirmed in the future, as well as sessions that are currently active, and can control device power based on scheduled usage to ensure that devices are automatically powered off when not in use and automatically powered up when they're needed.

The latest Lab Manager (5.7) enhancements include an upgraded client-user interface with a new search dialog box, device port provisioning to edit protocol/rate settings for existing ports and assign card names and port group names to one or more ports, new and enhanced APIs, and enhanced Web user interface.

Analyst Dennis Drogseth, vice president, Enterprise Management Associates, says Gale is extremely innovative. To realize the cost and efficiency savings driven by cloud infrastructures, companies need to fully understand all aspects of shared virtual infrastructures - while not taking their eyes off the core foundational physical IT resources, he adds.

"They are optimized to this hybrid situation, understanding that resources and automatic provisioning need to come together." That makes them unique in this space although a host of platform vendors, including Novell, VMware, IBM, CA, BMC and HP all offer pieces of the puzzle, he says. "Their portfolios are bigger and in some respects richer and more complex, but they're more costly if you put all the pieces together." He thinks the fact that Gale has brought all the pieces together gives them both a quantitative as well as qualitative advantage. "It's becoming really critical to have good technologies to provide you something a little more cohesive than the traditional niche solutions."