VKernel, a division of Dell Software, announced enhanced support for its growing install base of managed service providers (MSP).

Enhanced support includes the ability to better control the highly dynamic workloads experienced by MSP infrastructures through new subscription licensing available for all VKernel products and the launch of vOPS Server Enterprise 6.7.

VKernel delivers virtualization management solutions that provide data centers with control over their virtual environments through analysis, advice and automation of common VM management use cases. These capabilities are essential for MSPs. VKernel adds two new capabilities to enhance this support for MSP customers:

- New monthly subscription licensing.

- Dynamic thresholding visualization and alarms that show what normal resource utilization is for a VM.

The number of VMs that an MSP manages can change drastically from month to month with new customers and new VM requests. As a result, MSPs frequently power on new hosts, or power off hosts that are not needed. To maintain control over their managed VMs, MSPs must also be able to extend or retract virtualization management software coverage to match their powered-on hosts. VKernel enables this capability with new subscription-based pricing for all products specifically for MSPs. This new licensing model enables MSPs to scale VKernel product coverage to an exact virtualized host count on a monthly basis.

Just as MSPs do not know how many hosts they will need at any given time, the amount of resources that each hosted VM will utilize is also unknown: this information is rarely communicated by a customer. To further complicate matters, some applications may face unusual utilization during certain times of the day, week or month as part of normal operating procedure. These fluctuations make it challenging for an MSP to recognize when a change in utilization is typical for that VM, or indicative of a possible issue.

VKernel provides insight into when a VM’s utilization is problematic with the newly launched vOPS Server Enterprise 6.7. This release makes available “out-of-the-box” dynamic baselining visualization and alarms, which calculate and show what normal utilization should be for each VM based on historical observation. The actual utilization is then visually super-imposed over the calculated normal range.

These new capabilities are enabled through self-learning analytics that determine normal utilization levels for CPU, memory and storage specific to the time of the day, week, month or year. MSP customers using these functions can gain control over performance issues caused by abnormal utilization within the VMs they manage.

“We are pleased to be able to offer all of our virtualization management products through monthly subscription for managed service providers,” says Alex Rosemblat, Product Marketing Manager, VKernel. “This licensing plan will allow our MSP customers to efficiently deploy our software to manage only the hosts that are in use and further maximize the virtualization ROI that our features enable.”