vOptimizer Pro From Vizioncore

Vizioncore Inc., in server virtualization management, announced the general availability of vOptimizer Pro. vOptimizer Pro enables customers to reclaim over-allocated and unused space in Windows virtual machines. vOptimizer Pro also automates storage reclamation from Windows guest operating systems in order to reduce storage requirements and improve virtual machine performance and was a finalist at the Best of VMworld Awards 2008.

Typically 50 to 80 percent of a virtual machine’s footprint is unused space allocated at the initial point of provisioning. vOptimizer Pro allows customers to reclaim this storage capacity by inspecting the virtual machine’s file system and subsequently resizing the partition while also streamlining the guest operating system. Freespace quotas allow administrators to specify the amount of storage headroom required by different categories of virtual machines. These are rules that can automatically reduce and/or increase volume size.

“Virtualized storage can often be one of the most expensive components of a virtual infrastructure, but customers continue to rely on a lot of educated guess work to predict their storage requirements,” said Christopher Page, Director of Product Management at Vizioncore. “It can also be difficult and time consuming for customers to properly manage and maintain their storage deployments, leading to a significant cost for storage that can be reclaimed and reallocated with this solution. vOptimizer Pro allows IT administrators to automate ongoing housekeeping on their virtualized storage infrastructure, creating highly optimized virtual machines that have smaller footprints and deliver improved performance.”

vOptimizer Pro allows customers to:

• Right-size shared storage resources – By reclaiming storage capacity, vOptimizer Pro allows IT departments to re-use those resources for other valuable initiatives, such as disaster recovery and test & development.
• Reduce enterprise storage costs – Virtual machines can be provisioned with the click of a button, making it very easy for infrastructures to grow rapidly and putting a significant strain on costly storage resources. The ROI on storage reclamation using vOptimizer Pro can be easily calculated: An average resize typically reduces a virtual machine’s size by 50% – therefore a 50 GB virtual machine will be resized to 25 GB, saving 25GB. At a nominal price of $5/GB this would equate to savings of $125 per virtual machine, which can add up to significant savings in environments of hundreds of VMs.
• Improve virtual machine portability and accelerate disaster recovery – Many of the benefits associated with virtualization can be attributed to the fact that virtual machines can be copied, stored and moved around the network like a standard file. By creating more streamlined virtual machines, vOptimizer Pro ensures a higher level of workload portability within the virtual infrastructure. Tasks such as backup & recovery and replication are also accelerated.
• Lower IT maintenance overheads – IT admins are often faced with the task of reducing or increasing the volume and VMDK size of a running VM manually – typically an extremely difficult and time consuming task. vOptimizer Pro automates this cumbersome procedure completely.

“With a very small storage budget we needed a product that could reduce the size of our virtual servers. vOptimizer Pro is the answer and more, it reduced the size of our VMDKs and saved real money. It also schedules the ‘right-sizing’ of our virtual servers so they always have 20% free space. I am very impressed with Vizioncore’s solution and have recommended it to my colleagues,” commented John Devlin, Technology Services Manager, County of Kern, California.

Pricing and Availability
Vizioncore vOptimizer Pro is now available from Vizioncore’s worldwide channel partner network. vOptimizer Pro is available at an SRP of $299 per socket.