VKernel, a division of Quest Software, announced the addition of a new free utility that assesses virtual machine performance, efficiency and capacity. The new utility, Environment Explorer, is delivered as a module in the free vOPS Server Explorer appliance.

Kernel’s Environment Explorer uses the same analytics and advisory engine from the paid vOPS Server Standard product to provide virtual administrators with a rapid assessment of the state of their environment.

Assessed values include:

- Identify critical VM configuration errors such as memory limits and old snapshots that will severely affect performance and can be especially hard to track down and solve.

- Recognize performance bottlenecks from high CPU ready, memory swapping, device latency and other causes.

- Detect inefficiency/waste created by VMs with CPU, memory and storage over allocation.

- Find available capacity expressed as the number of VMs that can be deployed without causing performance bottlenecks.

- Pinpoint oversubscription of CPU, memory and storage resources and whether the over-allocation is impacting performance.

Environment Explorer is the third free utility in vOPS Server Explorer. As a single virtual appliance download, vOPS Server Explorer now offers three impressive free utilities in one including: vScope Explorer, SearchMyVM Explorer, and now Environment Explorer

All three utilities are built using the same analytics and advisory engine as VKernel’s paid commercial products, providing unparallel accuracy and value for virtual administrators.

“Assessing the state of virtual environments is a critical first step before determining what types of management controls need to be put into place,” says Mattias Sundling, Product Evangelist, VKernel. “Environment Explorer as a free utility provides that first pass assessment of virtual environment health. When combined with SearchMyVM Explorer and vScope Explorer, the three free utilities together make for an unbeatable combination.”