What are my freeware and open source options for managing virtual servers?
Companies such as Hyperic and Veeam have released products designed to manage virtual environments. Hyperic, which released its Hyperic HQ for VMware software last year, built capabilities to extend the company’s flagship software into virtual environments. The vendor wrote integrations into VMware’s APIs and Virtual Center interface to discover both physical and virtual servers and incorporate virtual instances into an inventory of all systems. If something changes, the software detects it, updates the repository and alerts IT. HQ performs what the company calls “physical to virtual mapping” that shows IT managers the virtual machines and their hosts, as well as operating systems and applications running within the virtual machines.

In Veeam’s case, the start-up is building a commercial software business off of the success of its freeware application. FastSCP 2.0 for VMware is a freeware file-management product that helps customers move virtual machines and copy instances from one server to another. FastSCP was originally released in October 2006 and “became the de facto standard for ESX file management,” says Veeam President and CEO Ratmir Timashev.

Other industry watchers shy away from advocating freeware or open source applications for full-blown virtual server management.

“The risk in using freeware or open source is really low if it fills a gap in existing management tools, but I’d be nervous about trying to extend the capabilities or scale the application to cover an enterprise-level deployment. You don’t want to get too far down the path with the freeware or open source application and realize it will not meet all the needs,” Yankee Group’s Hamilton says.

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