eG Innovations Extends Multi-Platform Virtualization Management with Support for Citrix XenServer, Solaris Logical Domains

Company also simplifies configuration of monitoring for VMware ESX and ESXi servers
VMworld 2008
Booth #1419

Continuing to deliver on its strategy to become the industry’s leading single-source supplier of management software for all popular virtualization platforms, eG Innovations, Inc., today announced that its eG VM MonitorTM now supports CitrixXen ServerTM and Sun Microsystems’ SolarisTM Logical Domains (LDoms). eG Innovations, a global provider of business service monitoring and triage solutions for both virtual and physical IT infrastructures, will be demonstrating many of the enhanced capabilities at its booth (#1419) at VMworld 2008, Sept. 15-18 at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas.

The enhancements are part of v4.2 of the company’s eG Enterprise SuiteTM, which already supports VMware® ESX and ESX 3i servers as well as Solaris Containers. The new software release also strengthens management of VMware environments. eG Enterprise agents can now be integrated directly within VMware’s Virtual Center. This greatly simplifies configuration of the monitoring for VMware server farms. Also, the eG VM Monitor software now monitors the VMware Virtual Desktop Manager to provide an end-to-end view of a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) deployment. A new VM Search capability makes it easier to track the status and performance of virtual machines (VMs) as they move from one physical server to another.

“As an industry, we’re moving from the first phase of virtualization into what is being called Virtualization 2.0, where production deployments are becoming more prevalent,” said Srinivas Ramanathan, founder, president and CEO of eG Innovations. “Phase one of virtualization primarily involved staging and development of the environments, and virtual infrastructures typically were over-provisioned to ensure acceptable performance.

“But Virtualization 2.0 is all about manageability,” Ramanathan said. “The emphasis is shifting from over provisioning to right provisioning. Many of the core monitoring and management challenges we have faced in the physical infrastructure will be relevant in this phase. We’ve made eG Enterprise ‘Virtualization 2.0 Ready’ by supporting multiple virtualization technologies and by providing an integrated view of the physical and virtual infrastructures. These new capabilities allow customers to track usage and performance across applications running inside VMs and quickly identify the true root cause of any performance issue.”

Support for Citrix XenServer and Solaris LDoms

The eG Enterprise Suite monitors Citrix XenServers and Sun LDoms in much the same way it monitors VMware ESX servers. eG Enterprise v4.2 offers agent-based and agentless monitoring of CitrixXen server v4.0 and 4.1. For agent-based monitoring, an eG agent on the control domain of a XenServer monitors the hypervisor and all its virtual machines (VMs).

Administrators can also choose to monitor their XenServers without agents, with either a Linux or a Windows system being used to host the remote data collector. Citrix XenMotion activity is tracked to determine when, how often, why and where VMs migrate to.

Used with Solaris LDom environments, besides revealing how effectively each logical domain utilizes the allocated resources, the eG agent on the control domain of the Solaris host also measures the impact of the resource usage of the LDoms on the physical resources of the host. With minimal configuration, this agent can auto-discover the IP address and current state of each LDom executing on a Solaris host, and automatically map the applications executing on the LDoms to the corresponding Solaris server. This automatic mapping facilitates quick and accurate root-cause identification of problems.

“eG Innovations’ decision to integrate its software with Sun Microsystems’ Solaris Logical Doms technology is a testament that Solaris Logical Doms is the most open virtualization technology available,” said Gan Boon San, president, Asia South, Sun Microsystems. “By working together, eG Innovations and Sun Microsystems enable businesses to reduce costs and maximize assets to optimize their IT infrastructure.”

Regardless of the virtualization platform being monitored, eG’s patent-pending In-N-Out MonitoringTM technology allows an eG agent to provide not only an “outside” view of all the VMs showing the physical resources consumed by the VMs, but also provides an “inside” view of the VMs, highlighting the resources used by the applications running inside the VMs. No other monitoring tool provides this combination of views using a single-agent architecture.

“The more companies deploy critical business services through virtualized IT infrastructures, the more they realize the importance of monitoring the performance of all the component parts to ensure optimum service quality,” said Cameron Haight, a research VP with Gartner. “Because of the increasing number of individuals involved in the support of their organization’s virtualization initiatives, these IT departments should look for tools that can provide the insight to meet the needs of a variety of stakeholders — including the application of analytics as well as automation to address both growing complexity and continuing skills limitations.”

eG Enterprise v4.2 provides many other improvements and new features. These include: tracking and reporting uptime of individual VMs, ability to share customized views and reports among all or specific administrators, allowing administrators to select a console display “skin” (color) of their choice, providing selectable alert modes (e.g., email and SMS) to accommodate preferences of administrators who work in shifts; and custom monitoring of the BlackBerry Enterprise Server.

Availability and Pricing

The eG Enterprise v4.2 will be available at the end of September. Pricing for any virtualization platform supported is per server monitored, regardless of the hardware capabilities (e.g., CPU, memory, socket) of the server, or the number of virtual machines or virtual desktops it supports. Pricing for a 25-node environment starts at $50,000. For more information: visit http://www.eginnovations.com/web/vmware.htm.

About eG Innovations

eG Innovations, Inc. (www.eginnovations.com) is a global provider of performance monitoring and triage solutions for both virtual and physical IT infrastructures. The company’s patented technologies provide proactive monitoring of every layer of every tier in the infrastructure, thereby enabling rapid diagnosis and recovery in enterprise and service provider networks. By ensuring high availability and optimum performance of mission-critical business services, eG Innovations’ solutions help enhance customers’ competitive positioning, lower operational costs and optimize the performance of their infrastructures. The company has customers in 14 countries, including organizations of all sizes in government, banking/finance, telecom, healthcare, manufacturing and service industries.

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