Quest Updates vFoglight; New Features, Better Reporting

Quest Software has announced version 6.5 of its vFoglight virtualization performance management software, which adds support for Microsoft's Hyper-V, a more easily customized administrative dashboard, and improved reporting capabilities. Other new features in this version include improvements in automated responses to event alarms, the ability to more easily determine the root cause of virtual machine problems, broader support for common virtual machine tasks, additional information that is easier to understand about the infrastructure, and support for features present in the most recent versions of VMware.

Chadd Warwick, systems architect for CSS Hosted Systems, a development company, says he is particularly interested in vFoglight's custom dashboards and improved reporting capabilities. "In our network operations center, we have 55- and 60-inch monitors for our techs to keep an eye on," he says. vFoglight's new custom dashboards, as opposed to the previous fixed form, give Warwick's users an improved ability to resize the display and take advantage of all that landscape, he says. He is not sure, however, how much he will make use of the new automation features because he is running a production environment, he says. His organization, which makes software for about six companies in the brokerage industry, has about 120 employees in its development branch and another 70 in a branch, new this year, that runs software as a service for two brokerage houses.

The improvements in automation work in the context of alerts, letting an administrator launch a workflow process comprising a series of steps that is tied to a specific alert. The software offers in-context administration, which helps users research and solve problems without having to leave the software. The new style of dashboard can be customized by users with drag-and-drop technology, Warwick adds. These features are important because the company is seeing a shift deeper in the data center, with virtualization being used for more strategic opportunities within larger organizations, as well as a shift in the level of customer maturity.

Virtualization management needs to provide cross-hypervisor support and more advanced functionality as organization's virtualization environments become larger and more complex, and as they begin virtualizing business-critical applications, says Bernd Harzog, analyst of virtualization performance and capacity management for The Virtualization Practice. vFoglight's new features (particularly the support for Microsoft Hyper-V), functions that shorten problem resolution time, and the product's existing automation features will allow user organizations to scale up their environments while maintaining their existing staffing levels, he says.

vFoglight 6.5 is available now for $699 per physical CPU socket. In addition, a free 30-day trial version is available. The company claims to have more than 6,500 users of the product worldwide.