IBM Unveils VMControl for Data Centers

ibm-VMControlExpressTopoMap

A screen shot from the IBM VMControl data center management software.

IBM has introduced new sofware to help companies manage virtualized data center environments. IBM Systems Director VMControl Enterprise Edition, combined with IBM Tivoli software, allows combinations of physical and virtual IBM servers to be managed as a single entity. This approach – known as system pooling – expands the benefits of virtualization by helping corporate data centers simplify complex management functions and better share resources such as CPU, memory and storage.

VMControl Enterprise supports IBM's PowerVM and z/VM as well as x86 virtualization technologies such as VMWare, Hyper-V and open x86 virtualization solutions. It will be available on IBM Power Systems running AIX in December, with support for other platforms planned for next year.

IBM also announced a new version of Tivoli Provisioning Manager that provides enhanced automation of the manual tasks of provisioning and configuring servers, operating systems, middleware, software applications, storage and network devices.

Big Blue also stayed busy on the hardware front, expanding its strategic partnership with network equipment vendor Voltaire, which specializes in InfiniBand switching platforms offering connectivity at 20 and 40 gigabits. IBM will sell Voltaire’s newly introduced 10 Gigabit Ethernet switches with IBM’s integrated System Cluster 1350 portfolio of products.

"Expanding our partnership with Voltaire into Ethernet networking will help support IBM’s data center networking initiatives with a solution that offers customers the performance, efficiency and scalability they need to get the utmost value out of their scale-out and virtualized environments,” said Alex Yost, vice president, IBM Systems & Technology Group.