VMware debuts premium Recovery, Stage Manager services
VMware has released two new virtualization management services and bundles to advance its technical lead in the market.
To that end, the Palo Alto, Calif. announced Tuesday plans to deliver the VMware Site Recovery Manager, VMware Stage Manager and a number of bundles combining those with existing products within a month.
The VMware Site Recovery Manager features integrated management of disaster recovery plans from within VirtualCenter. To date, managing disaster recovery plans has been complex and time consuming for many organizations, VMware claims. This new product reportedly allows customers to test out disaster recovery plans without disrupting normal activities. It also offers automated failover and recovery, including automated execution of the recovery process without manual intervention. It won’t be available for 30 days but customers can begin ordering now.
The VMware Stage Manager, also announced on May 12, accelerates and simplifies the delivery of applications from staging to production and user acceptance. With this, IT managers don’t need to keep track various configurations and multiple instances of the application as it moves through integration, testing, staging and delivery. Stage Manager has been in beta testing since January and is available as of May 19.
The EMC-owned company is also shipping a couple of bundles integrating these new products with existing management services. The first IT Service Delivery bundle includes VMware Lifecycle Manager and VMware Lab Manager, both existing products, with the new VMware Stage Manager. That bundle is priced at $2,995 for two processors. The Management and Automation bundle includes the IT Service Delivery as well as the VMware Site Recovery Manager for a price of $3995 per two processors. Both bundles are available as of May 19, VMware said.
VMware’s roster of a la carte, add on infrastructure, management and automation services for its core ESX virtualization platform continues to expand. Aside from the core server and desktop virtualization platforms, VMware sells 12 separate, complementary services. Site Recovery Manager, which is being announced this week, is VMware’s first business continuity service. VMware Stage Manager, the other new product, joins VMware Lab Manager and Lifecycle Manager in the IT Service Delivery department. On the infrastructure side, VMware sells Distributed Resource Management (DRS), High Availability, Consolidated Backup, VMotion, and VMware Update Manager services.
And on the management and automation end, VMware sells VirtualCenter, Virtual Capacity Planner, and Virtual Converter. VMware also sells Virtual Desktop Infrastructure and VMware ACE desktop products.
With competitors ranging from Microsoft to Citrix’s XenSource, SWSoft, Parallels and Qumranet on its heels, the pressure is on VMware to leapfrog on the innovation front. With all of these separate a la carte services, it seems to be doing so. VMware has earned its reputation as the premium high-priced vendor, but with old and new competition advancing their wares, it’s only a matter of time before the price tags on those add on services come down – or those capabilities are slipstreamed into the upgrades of the core ESX and VirtualCenter platform.