HotLink Enables Azure, OpenStack Management Through vCenter

As a provider of a tool that extends the reach of VMware vCenter into other IT environments, HotLink has been giving IT organizations a way to manage multiple types of virtual machines running on-premise or in the cloud. The company is now extending that reach to include Microsoft Azure and OpenStack clouds.

HotLink already provides support for Amazon Web Services, VMware’s vCloud Air, and Microsoft Hyper-V, Citrix XenServer, and Red Hat KVM hypervisors. Jerry McLeod, VP of business development for HotLink, said this week’s release of HotLink Cloud Management Express makes it simpler for IT organizations that have standardized on VMware vCenter to manage all those platforms from the same management console.

The solution is designed to make it easier to extend vCenter tools and workflows, such as orchestration, self-service portals, PowerCLI scripts, and automation across hybrid IT environments.

While most of these environments are managed in a semi-autonomous manner today, Mcleod said, there has been a sharp pick up in the number of IT organizations starting to embrace truly hybrid cloud computing. As most of those organizations have already standardized on vCenter to manage their on-premise environments, they may benefit from the ability to use the same management system for multiple clouds.

“IT has been siloed around on-premises and the cloud, when it was mainly application development and testing running in the cloudm and there was not a lot of resources being consumed in the cloud,” said McLeod. “Now that production applications are showing up, the internal IT organizations are getting a lot more involved.”

Now that many organizations have adopted a “cloud-first” approach to IT, the pressure to find ways to unify the management of hybrid clouds has increased substantially.

The features include auto-discovery of cloud-based resources running on- and off-premise within the context of a vCenter inventory tree; the ability to continuously monitor and analyze how those resources are being consumed; and the ability to provision VMs and edit their properties. It also provides a single console for managing alarms, alerts, and change management, as well as a way to track who accessed what controls when across hybrid platforms.

Of course, it’s not clear to what degree vCenter will be the center of the hybrid cloud management. But given the installed base of IT organizations that have already invested heavily in VMware’s technology, it’s a management platform that is sure to be in the enterprise IT mix.