CA Expands Offerings for Virtualized Data Centers, Private Clouds

IT management software company CA announced a strategy for optimizing IT services by improving the management of next-generation virtualized data centers and private clouds. CA said its solution for unified business service assurance and automation would involve coupling comprehensive availability and performance management for VMware vSphere 4 environments and Cisco virtualized network switches.

CA is broadening the scope of its Spectrum Infrastructure Manager, eHealth Performance Manager and Spectrum Automation Manager to encompass in one integrated, end-to-end management solution both physical and virtual server and network environments, as well as databases, voice and unified communications systems and other networked applications. The products are being enhanced to support VMware vSphere 4 and the Cisco Nexus 1000V distributed virtual software switch, which is an integrated option in VMware vSphere 4.

Roger Pilc, corporate senior vice president and general manager of CA's infrastructure management and automation business unit, said with the integration of the Cisco Nexus 1000V with VMware vSphere 4, the lines between physical and virtual network and systems management have blurred. "CA's support for VMware vSphere 4 and Cisco Nexus 1000V will provide a unique, highly integrated, closed-loop approach to business service assurance and automation," he said Our solution will help customers achieve Lean IT by increasing IT operations productivity while improving service assurance, helping to reduce administrative overhead, and lowering total cost of ownership."

The company's Spectrum Infrastructure Manager and eHealth Performance Manager's support for VMware vSphere 4 and Cisco Nexus 1000V will deliver event correlation and root cause analysis that reduces "noise" by suppressing symptomatic alarms. The products will also deliver "deviation-from-normal" proactive performance management of virtual environments that helps identify performance issues before users and services are impacted. In addition, CA said they are designed to deliver live interactive reporting for troubleshooting, as well historical trend reports for capacity planning reports.

CA's object model will include a consolidated hierarchical view of VMware vCenter Server hosts, VMware vSphere 4 hosts, data centers, clusters, resource pools, virtual switches and virtual machines, all integrated with the existing physical infrastructure. CA argues this model-based management, resource monitoring approach helps reduce costs and increase staff efficiency by correlating physical and virtual data across the infrastructure to speed time to problem identification and resolution.

"With its expanded scope of integrated physical and virtual management including new network systems, CA's Spectrum and eHealth solutions will help accelerate the continued adoption of virtualization within corporate data centers," said VMware's vice president of infrastructure alliances, Shekar Ayyar. "By supporting VMware vSphere 4 and Cisco's Nexus 1000V, CA will be able to provide customers with a streamlined management solution for their cloud computing needs."