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Virtualization specialist VMware announced new features of Go, the company’s Web-based service that provides small to medium-size businesses with an on-ramp to virtualizing their applications by automating the installation and configuration of VMware’s hypervisor, ESXi. With Go, developed in partnership with VMware Technology Alliance partner Shavlik Technologies, SMBs can virtualize servers and create new virtual machines (VM), and those that have VMs on VMware Server can also move to the more scalable ESXi platform, the company noted.
Another new feature of Go is Collective Intelligence, which helps guide a customer’s virtualization experience by aggregating user data to show virtualization best practices. With Collective Intelligence, users can view what other users have done in each stage of the virtualization process so they can improve confidence while making virtualization decisions. Additionally, users can view reports and dashboards with such information as the average number of VMs users are creating per ESXi server, the top five hardware types on which the community is running ESXi, or the top five virtual appliances that have been downloaded from Go.
“With the new features of VMware Go, we’re providing the easiest on-ramp to virtualization for SMBs — at no cost,” said Manoj Jayadevan, director of emerging business and products at VMware. “Along with the ability to seamlessly migrate VMs from VMware Server to ESXi, the new Collective Intelligence guide for VMware Go makes it easier than ever to quickly realize the full benefits of ESXi and enable SMBs to maximize limited IT resources in just hours or days.”
Go simplifies the virtualization process in three steps: Initial ESXi server setup, using collective intelligence guides, a built-in hardware compatibility check and automated migration, virtual machine migration, which allows users to leverage existing physical server configuration, install a prebuilt virtual appliance, or start with a new, clean virtual machine and lastly, manage ESXi servers and virtual machines with patch scan and remediation and monitoring.
Trevor Hart, vice president of marketing at Limos.com, a start-up limousine rental company, said they chose to virtualize because they needed to run a number of server OS’s, preferring to segment each business function into its own server. “Go got us up and running in days rather than weeks,” he said. “We chose virtualization over separate physical machines to save both money and time spent, not to mention minimizing any compatibility issues.”