Streamline Your Physical & Virtual Infrastructure
By CXOtoday Staff
Mumbai, 26 Aug 2008, 1435 hrs IST

Targeting companies with a mix of virtual and physical servers, Raritan has introduced new capabilities to its leading data center management software.

A press release said the new release of CommandCenter Secure Gateway (CC-SG) provides consolidated discovery, access and control, power management and auditing of all elements of an IT infrastructure - including virtual servers, physical servers, networking equipment, and power devices.

CC-SG 4.0 keeps tabs on the migration of data between virtual and physical machines. From a single dashboard screen, users can view all IT assets, organize them in logical views of their choosing, and launch the best remote access and management tool for the job, including third-party tools.

CC-SG is accessed by logging onto a single IP address, eliminating multiple logins and the need to open multiple interfaces in order to reach a specific server or group of servers.

"The growing coexistence of virtual and physical servers adds new layers of complexity to IT management," said Henry Hsu, Raritan's director of enterprise products.

"Tools, such as VMWare's VirtualCenter, do a great job of providing a single point of access to all VMWare access methods. But, they only provide a partial view of the data center. Each server layer could potentially employ a different access tool -- with different authorization, audit, and administration layers. Instead of doubling or tripling the number of tools and adding extra complexity to data center administration, Raritan has developed a single consolidated management portal to simplify things. We view a virtual machine as one more item in the IT infrastructure that CommandCenter Secure Gateway can manage."

CC-SG also securely handles all authorization, auditing and session handoffs. CC-SG authenticates users, audits access and collects events and alerts from both types of servers in a single interface for easier access, control and rights management. CC-SG's Virtualization Manager enables bulk configuration of username/password or service accounts to provide automatic sign on to Virtual Machines - saving lots of setup and configuration time.

CC-SG 4.0 is available for download as of now. The firmware upgrade is available to all existing CC-SG E1 and V1 customers as a free upgrade to their existing product.

Raritan said no special virtualization license or activation fee is required -- a virtual machine, ESX server, and Virtual Centers are all nodes and, therefore, can be added to CC-SG without any setup restriction. CC-SG currently supports VMWare, and is designed to support other virtualization software in the future.


Related links:
Virtualization Solution for Data Centers