Virtual Server Management Software for a Large Hardware Manufacturer
- IndustryManufacturing, Network Equipment and Data Storage
- Solution General Development, Embedded Software
Challenge
The Customer was initially tasked with finding a development partner to assist in the upgrade of the existing Server Management software suite to the new version. The goal was to add Virtual Server Management capabilities to the existing solution to gain a competitive advantage over HP and IBM. Some improvements and extensions of the existing functionality were also in the scope of the project. The demanding challenges that the program faced were to create a comprehensive centralized console environment that was able to manage both physical and virtual machines. The Customer recognized that bringing a comprehensive system management tool with mixed physical/virtual environments could be a huge competitive advantage, increase revenue and market share. The Company needed to partner with a team of experienced developers to expedite the development. SaM Solutions was chosen as a primary partner due to the successful completion of a prototype project for the Customer in 2007.
Solution
SaM Solutions quickly assembled a team of experienced software developers to create the framework needed to manage the project. Developers created the new functionality with a service-oriented interface where virtual machines can be efficiently maintained and managed. The software suite has the following features:
- Visualization and navigation of virtual-to-physical resources and relationships
- Monitoring of the status and resource utilization of physical hosts and Virtual Machines
- Witnessing of events that happen in the system
- Start, shut down, suspend, resume, and restart virtual machines
- Adding or removing of physical hosts to/from groups (farming)
The suite supports operating systems that run on the Central Management Station as on the ServerView Operations Manager (Windows, Linux). If there is the need to use the vendor’s user interface, it is also possible to apply the VMware or Microsoft Hyper-V interface, directly from the management console for compatibility purposes.
The suite also supports the following virtualization software:
- VMware ESX (> 3.5)
- VMware 3i (> 3.5)
- Microsoft Hyper-V
- Xen (> 3.1)
- XenSource (> 3.1) on Xen level
- The entire range of PRIMERGY servers
Toolbox
Success
The Customer chose SaM Solutions as a partner, relying on the expertise level of bringing a comprehensive solution to market fast. The Customer quickly gained trust and confidence in the knowledge that the SaM Solutions team encompassed, by including them in a wide variety of research and development tasks. The result was a highly successful release. SaM Solutions and the Customer were able to successfully develop, implement, deploy, and maintain virtual server management capabilities to the Customer’s software.
