When Deploying a Centralized IT Management Solution, Leverage the Advantages of a Virtual Appliance

October 25, 2010

Vendors in the IT and data center space are beginning to make their centralized management systems available as a virtual appliance, enabling them to run on leading virtualization platforms. This is the case with Raritan’s CommandCenter Secure Gateway (CC-SG). A new version will be released in November that can be deployed as a VMware virtual machine.

Running as a virtual machine (VM) – especially within a VMware environment that delivers several key features rich in flexibility and security, has several operational advantages over a proprietary hardware solution. For example, there is likely space and resources available in an established virtual environment on which the appliance can be installed. As a result, additional hardware expense is avoided. Also, with a virtual appliance, there is no extended hardware warranty to purchase.

When it comes to hardware based solutions – especially proprietary platforms – setting up a redundant management system can be cumbersome. To implement automatic backup and failover, a hardware based solution will require two mirrored appliances – and all the licensing, maintenance and network setup that comes with it. Conversely, a virtual appliance is simply one of many virtual machines running on a shared host (and there are likely many hosts available for backup). If the host fails, the VM is automatically regenerated on another host. Storage is independent of the host, so that piece is very stable and reliable.

Licensing costs can also be minimized because only one instance of the virtual appliance is running. There’s no need to buy multiple management system licenses to deploy across several servers in order to implement a “clustered” failover solution. In a virtual environment, when licensing for the appliance is designed efficiently and with the customer’s interests at heart, only one license is usually all that’s needed. One virtual appliance can typically provide dozens of users with access to several thousand servers, PDU’s and other data center devices.

Lastly, a virtual appliance is also much easier to evaluate. “Demo” versions are often available that either have time constraints or feature limits. Compared to ordering, installing and possibly returning hardware appliances, it’s easy to download and install a demo appliance. The CC-SG demo includes no expiration and is fully functional: it simply limits the quantity of devices that can be accessed.