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Yesterday VMware officially announced its new management tool vCenter Operations.

This product is VMware's first release of a management tool based off of Integrien's AliveVM (which VMware recently purchased).  However, this is not just a simple rebranding of a Intergien's product.  VMware has brought together the best of AliveVM and added a much deeper element to it.

<a href="http://blogs.eGroup-us.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/vCenterOps1.png"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-3769" src="http://blogs.eGroup-us.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/vCenterOps1.png" alt="" width="600" height="432" /></a>

<!--more-->vCenter Operations uses trending, and detailed analytics to provide you with a green/yellow/red assessment of your environment.  This information is compiled into a quick 0-100+ score of aspects like capacity, workload, and health.  These numbers come from historical information that is compared to the current standing.   What's really nice about this information is, since it is using historical information rather than flat line hard coded threshholds, the amount of false alams are significatly reduced.  We all have been in the situation where we get too many alerts sent to us, so we do one of two things, either start ignoring the alerts, or turn the alerts off.  With vCenter Operations, it is "intelligent" enough to understand the trend of how systems usually operate.  For example, when users log on in the morning and resources spike, normally you would get an alert stating that you have passed the threshold of usage on a host, and continue getting those alerts everyday.  There is nothing wrong with the host, and it runs within spec the rest of the day, so what good is that alert? None.  With vCenter Operations, it "learns" that those spikes in the morning when everyone comes in are normal, and adjusts the bell curve to link up with the users logging in.  This way it doesn't send the alert for normal usage, it will only send the alert if the host goes out side it's adaptive tolerance level.  Rarely does IT infrastructure work off of a flat line usage graph, there are dips and swells based off of time of the day, week, month, and year.  vCenter Operations learns these fluctuations and is able to analyze all of that information to simplify the alerting, and make it so that the alerts are pertinent and reliable.

It comes in three flavors: Standard, Advanced and Enterprise.  vCenter Ops Standard and Advanced compile all the data into from the virtual infrastructure only (Standard is limited to 500 VMs).  Where as Enterprise provides the ability to tie in other utilities (ie. Service Center Operations Manager) and compile that information into the vCenter Operations system.  Still providing you with a scored number that is adaptive to the historical information provided by the outside utility.

<img class="alignnone" src="http://www.vmware.com/files/images/diagrams/VMW-DGRM-vCNTR-OPS-Version-Details-102.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="450" />

For more information check out the link <a title="vCenter Operations" href="http://www.vmware.com/products/vcenter-operations/overview.html" target="_blank">here</a>.  Also below is a great video demo of vCenter Operations Standard from Eric Sloof.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ft1vKHdPPUE

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