Multi-Hypervisor and Cloud Management Solutions

Back in November of 2012, I looked at some of the multiple hypervisor solutions that were available from Microsoft and VMware, as well as a few third party products. A lot has been happening in this area since then. More organizations are continuing to adopt multiple hypervisor platforms, plus there’s been continued uptake in cloud services, especially in Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offerings like you see in Amazon’s EC2. A couple of notable new products in this space include VMware's Multi-Hypervisor Manager 1.0 for vSphere and HotLink's Hybrid Express cloud and virtualization management product.

VMware Multi-Hypervisor Manager

VMware's Multi-Hypervisor Manager is a part of vSphere 5.1 (and higher) Standard edition.  Multi-Hypervisor Manager essentially replaces the older VMware vCenter XVP Manager and Converter. Multi-Hypervisor Manager enables the management of Windows Server 2008/2008 R2 Hyper-V from VMware's Infrastructure Client. Notably, this first release doesn't support the new vSphere Web Client, Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V, or Citrix’s XenServer virtualization.

The new Multi-Hypervisor Manager has a server component that installs on the vCenter Server and a client component that plugs into the vSphere Infrastructure Client. The server component connects directly to the Hyper-V server and there’s no need for System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM). The Multi-Hypervisor Manager supports basic management functions like creating and deleting VM’s as well as power/state management.

Multi-Hypervisor Manager doesn’t support more advanced operations like live migration. You can learn more about the Multi-Hypervisor Manager in the 1.0 Release Notes. You might also want to check out the recent webcast that I did covering Integrated Management for vSphere and Hyper-V. The session is free to watch on-demand, but you do have to register.

HotLink Hybrid Express

HotLink’s latest release of their Hybrid Express product is another important multi-cloud management solution. The earlier version of HotLink Hybrid Express acted as a VMware vSphere plug-in that enabled you to seamlessly manage Amazon’s EC2 from the vSphere Infrastructure Client. The newest version was released on April 3, 2013 and it extends Amazon EC2 management to Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012.

HotLink Hybrid Express now allows you to manage Amazon EC2 resource natively from Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) 2012, giving you a single point of management for your on-premise and Amazon cloud infrastructure. You can use the familiar VMM 2012 management console to manage EC2, in addition to your on-premise or Windows Azure-based clouds. You can create and manage EC2 VMs, as well as seamlessly move and clone VMs, between VMM 2012 and Amazon EC2.

The HotLink Transformation Engine performs all of the required VM format conversions. In addition, Amazon EC2 workloads can be provisioned from existing on-premise Amazon Media Manager (AMM) templates. The standard edition of HotLink Express starts at $26,700. If you want to give this a try, there are completely free versions of HotLink Hybrid Express for both vSphere and VMM that you can download. The free versions are fully featured, but limited to managing 10 Amazon EC2 instances.