SolarWinds Extends Virtualization Reach

SolarWinds took a major step in that direction today with the release of version 10 of its flagship network management offering. New features added to the company’s Orion Network Performance Monitor software includes support for VMware vSphere software,vMotion software from VMware and Cisco Nexus 1000V switches, all of which are cornerstone elements of data center convergence strategies within many IT environments

According to Sanjay Castelino, SolarWinds' vice president of product management, as virtual machines move about the network, IT managers need to see the connections between those virtual machines and the rest of the physical network in order to make sure that once a virtual machine moves, it doesn’t create a new bottleneck. To assist in that effort, SolarWinds has added software that not only helps map those connections, but also automatically discovers virtual machines as they move or added to the network.

Longer term, Castelino said the goal is to converge network, server and storage management under a single pane of glass, which in part drove SolarWinds' recent acquisition of Tek-Tools, a provider of storage management tools.

Version 10 of NPM is available now.