To help companies with a mix of virtual and physical servers, Raritan has introduced new capabilities to its data center management software. Best known for simplifying the management of heterogeneous IT environments through a unified portal, 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.

To deliver accurate, real-time IT infrastructure views, 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. Accessed by logging onto a single IP address, CC-SG eliminates time-consuming 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, Director-Enterprise Products, Raritan. “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,” added Hsu.

When virtual machines are moved from one hypervisor to another, CC-SG keeps tabs and synchronizes automatically in order to deliver real-time views of physical and virtual machines. In addition, remote access methods of choice can be launched from the CC-SG portal, including: remote control software-such as Windows Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), Windows Terminal Server, Secure Shell (SSH) and Virtual Network Computing (VNC); out-of-band console hardware (KVM switches and serial console servers), if BIOS access is required; as well as vendor-proprietary management controllers (HP iLO/iLO2, IBM RSA, Dell DRAC and IPMI).

“In effect, the new release of CC-SG provides a unified access portal to every layer of every server type, whether physical or virtual, Customers can easily add their VMware environment to CC-SG to obtain console and power operations to virtual machines, ESX host servers, and regular physical servers from one point of access and control,” added Sanjay Motwani, Country Manager, Raritan India.

New capabilities to the CC-SG software include: improved auto-discovery of servers and network devices by extending the capability to virtualized infrastructures; logging and reporting to include events from virtualized environments; ability to view and access multiple virtual centers from a single console; topology view of the virtualization environment with ability to single click a desired access method to any server-virtual or physical; virtual power command buttons supporting VMware capabilities, such as 'Suspending' virtual machines; and access to server power information.

The upgraded CC-SG management software also helps with power management. Secure outlet-level power control of intelligent PDUs, such as Raritan's Dominion PX, can be done directly on an IP network from the CC-SG portal-eliminating a middle management layer required by other solutions. CC-SG automatically identifies how many outlets are available on the PDU, firmware version, and serial number. From the CC-SG portal, a server's power can be turned on and off or cycled. CC-SG 4.0 is available to download. The firmware upgrade is available to all existing CC-SG E1 and V1 customers as a free upgrade to their existing product.

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 set-up restriction. CC-SG currently supports VMware, and is designed to support other virtualization software in the future.

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