Thu, June 05, 2008 — CIO — Virtualization management tools vendor Vizioncore isn't the brainchild of latecomers to the virtualization market, hoping to cash in on a hot field: It started out as a consulting firm doing large enterprise VMware deployments in Chicago in 2002, then in 2005, took its in-the-trenches knowledge and became a software vendor, says Chris Akerberg, Vizioncore's president and COO. Known for disaster recovery expertise, the company's key products include vRanger Pro (backup utility), vCharter (performance management) and vReplicator(virtual server-image distribution).

With 10,000-plus customers, ranging from SMBs to some of the largest VMware deployments, Akerberg has a clear view of the practical challenges of virtualization today and understands the related gripes of IT leaders. He also has some interesting opinions on the future of virtualization management tools—including the importance of automation of management tasks. Akerberg recently spoke with CIO.com technology editor Laurianne McLaughlin.

CIO: Why is virtual server migration modeling, where a product like your vCharter Pro maps out potential arrangements of VMs spread across a pool of physical servers, important to enterprises right now?
Akerberg: "Migration modeling is an example where thousands of customers said this was valuable. People have to make sure they don't create a problem while trying to solve one."

CIO: Where is modeling of virtual server environments headed next?
Akerberg: "Into the automation world. We're going to try and take away the tasks you'd ordinarily need a human body to take care of. Take out the manual intervention, but leave in the human decision-making process."

"Then we'll start to look at whether we can create intelligent models on our own and give recommendations [on virtual enterprise arrangements that work well]."

CIO: What's the hardest part of the virtualized enterprise to analyze and monitor right now? Are certain applications tough to monitor or problems tough to spot?
Akerberg: "It's not a specific application as much as the end-user and end-user satisfaction. It can be hard to understand how the virtualization layer is affecting the end-user experience. It could be the application, the configuration of the virtual hardware, like the switch. That's why we want to look at end-to-end performance."

CIO: Do your management tools offer that end-to-end view now?
Akerberg: "No. That's the next evolution. That's a big pain point we want to move toward."

CIO: Can your tools integrate with tools from the physical hardware world that show end-to-end performance?
Akerberg:"We are looking at ways to complement the Mercury tools of the world. We are also looking to do that with Quest, our parent company, which is a monitoring software vendor in its own right."