Vizioncore release free VMware Management Pack for OpsMgr

By Matt McSpirit - virtualboy. Microsoft Partner Technology Specialist for Virtualization;
http://blogs.technet.com/mattmcspirit

Vizioncore, a wholly owned subsidiary of Quest (the vWorkspace guys!), have released a free Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 which enables the monitoring of VMware virtual infrastructures.  Now, before I get into the features and capabilities of what the MP gives you, it’s important to point out that this is the first free MP to deliver these capabilities, and may stir things up a little over at both Veeam and Bridgeways, who both have established MP’s for OpsMgr to enable monitoring of VMware environments.  It’s important to say, both Veeam and Bridgeways offer trails of their solutions, so it would be important to compare the different MP’s for yourselves, however looking at a high level, one of the key elements that Veeam seems to have today, is that it’s PRO-enabled, thus provides more automated, dynamic and agile responses within the environment based on changing conditions.  That’s not to say both Bridgeways and Vizioncore won’t evolve their technologies in the future, and bring in PRO capabilities, however today, you would have to classify it as a differentiator for Veeam.  One you have to pay for however.

So, what are the key features of the Vizioncore MP?

• Essential alerts from the virtual infrastructure to reduce mean time to resolution (MTTR) of problems
• Integration to System Center Operations Manager to centralize and consolidate monitoring efforts
• Low cost and simple to use while allowing administrators to work in their familiar System Center Operations Manager views
• Native management pack delivers alert and event management as well as trending inside the SCOM console
• Agentless architecture for simple deployment and low overhead
• Performance monitoring & availability event monitoring for fast resolution in the virtual environment
• Out-of-the-box reports for host and guest metrics provides flexibility and clear communication between stakeholders

There’s even more features here…

What’s nice from my perspective, is the growth of the ecosystem around the Microsoft virtualisation platform, from Partners that have, in the past, been quite VMware focused.  That’s more Vizioncore than Quest, but still, it’s moving in the right direction.

If you’re interested, you can get all the info, and download the MP, from here.