Virtualisation tools specialist Vizioncore announced availability of its vControl multi-hypervisor virtual machine management tool this week.
vControl will turns heads for two reasons. Firstly, it will save time for busy IT staff because it can combine various Windows PowerShell scripts into a workflow to automate complex repetitive tasks, such as commissioning or decommissioning VMs.
vControl is also one of a new breed of management tools that work with several hypervisors. Initially vControl will work with VMware ESX Server, ESXi, Microsoft Hyper-V and Citrix XenServer. In around one month’s time, vControl will also work with VMs running under Sun Zones.
Roger Baskerville, Vizioncore vice president of EMEA, told The Hypervisor, “vControl is all about automating scripts and task based automation.” For example, previously, when an administrator needed to create a VMware VM that adhered to corporate policies, they would use vCenter and enter lots of parameters into several dialogue boxes. “But this is time consuming and tricky, so vControl automates the process so that once a template has been defined users can create a new VM simply by pressing an HTML button,” he added. vControl could be used to let people that use VMs build and deploy them for themselves, while providing administrators and datacenter managers with a single interface for task-based administration of VMs.
Baskerville said there were many examples of repetitive tasks that administrators may need to perform, sometimes on hundreds of VMs under their control. “For example, you could check for all your VMs to find those that have 256MB of RAM and upgrade them to 512MB,” he added.
Although the new tool works with PowerShell scripts, administrators don’t need to be able to write them. Vizioncore also sponsors the Virtualization Ecoshell Initiative and earlier this year it released a free tool that helps administrators create PowerShell scripts using a point and click graphical environment.
“You don’t need to know about scripting because the free Vesi tool will create them for you. Then just pop them into vControl,” said Baskerville.
vControl costs $399 per server CPU socket, and can also be purchased in a Vizioncore vEssentials bundle, which covers any three Vizioncore products for $899 per server CPU socket.