Customers are demanding tighter integration between virtual and physical environments to simplify the user experience and provide greater infrastructure control in a simple, familiar interface. HP Insight Control for VMware vCenter Server will enable administrators to more efficiently and easily manage both the physical and virtual components of their virtualized infrastructure through the VMware vCenter console. Customers can streamline day-to-day monitoring and management tasks while freeing up IT staff to focus on more strategic projects that better align technology to business needs.

"VMware and HP have joined together to help customers maximize their return on investment in virtualization, continuing our longstanding relationship of deep technology collaboration", stated Raghu Raghuram, vice president and general manager, Server Business Unit, VMware. "The new HP Insight Control for VMware vCenter Server combines two industry-leading management solutions to offer customers the best of both worlds through 'single-pane-of-glass' infrastructure management. The solution will help customers manage virtualized environments more easily, with familiar tools that their IT staff has been trained on. At the same time, customers will be able to improve operational efficiencies by spending less time on maintenance issues and more time building out solutions that will help increase revenue."

"Customers need both a technology infrastructure that accelerates their business and one that addresses the issue of rising management costs", stated Mark Potter, senior vice president and general manager, Infrastructure Software and Blades, HP. "HP and VMware have a shared vision of providing the best environment to improve administrator productivity, resource utilization and time-to-market for technology services to support business demand."

HP and VMware have delivered industry-leading solutions for more than seven years to solve customer problems around virtualizing their infrastructures and managing both physical and virtual environments.

HP Insight Control for VMware vCenter Server will empower customers to:

• Automatically reduce server problems: IT staff can gain deep insight into their HP physical infrastructures through the VMware vCenter console. If HP tools detect a potential failure, an alarm is passed to the VMware vCenter console, placing the server in maintenance mode while VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS), a component of VMware vSphere 4, automatically relocates the virtualized workload to a different host. In addition to ensuring uptime for virtual environments, HP Insight Control is a powerful solution to help manage physical servers. Using HP Insight Control to help manage physical infrastructure can decrease server downtime by up to 77%.
• Increase IT staff efficiency: With HP Insight Control for VMware vCenter Server, administrators will have access to the information they need to quickly resolve problems. This eliminates the need to switch between consoles to identify hardware issues that may impact application availability. Customers who use HP Insight Control to manage their HP ProLiant and HP BladeSystem physical infrastructures have been able to increase server-to-administrator ratios by up to 98%.
• Manage infrastructure globally: Customers will be able to remotely manage and troubleshoot VMware virtualized HP ProLiant and BladeSystem servers using HP Integrated Lights Out Advanced capabilities directly from the VMware vCenter Server console, resulting in quicker resolution of system issues and increased server uptime.
• Reduce energy costs: Intelligent power measurement and control through VMware Distributed Power Management (DPM) and HP Insight Control combined with energy-efficient HP hardware will help customers reduce power costs and their carbon footprint. With HP Insight Control, customers can triple the capacity of their data centres without expanding their existing power envelopes.

"We've already had huge success with VMware virtualization on HP ProLiant and BladeSystem hardware through our server consolidation project, and now our focus is on determining how we can optimize management of this environment", stated Joel Fuller, technical architect at Kroll Ontrack, a technology-driven services, software and consulting company that helps legal, corporate and government entities and consumers recover, search, analyze, produce and present data efficiently and cost-effectively. "HP Insight Control for VMware vCenter Server will help my team respond more quickly to ever-increasing service-level demands while eliminating many of the mundane tasks that consume much of their time."

VMware and HP plan to continue to develop go-to-market programmes that leverage both companies' direct and channel sales forces.

"Customers have been asking us for solutions that reduce management complexity and risk of downtime", stated James Geis, director of solution development at Forsythe, a North American IT infrastructure integrator. "This new joint solution from HP and VMware will provide a strong server virtualization management solution that addresses those issues."