VMLogix adds support for testing in the cloud |
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By Colleen Frye, Contributor
25 Jun 2009 | SearchCloudComputing.com |
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VMLogix Inc. jumps into the cloud this week with the beta release of LabManager – Cloud Edition for running virtual labs within the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). Going forward, the company will also roll out a hybrid edition that will enable customers to utilize and manage their on-premise virtual lab environment/private cloud and public cloud environment from a single pane of glass, according to Sameer Dholakia, CEO of VMLogix Inc., in Santa Clara, Calif.
The Cloud Edition of LabManger will enable the combination of multiple Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) into a single environment and automation of the deployment and re-deployment of multi-machine environments in a self-service, on demand fashion. The pay-as-you-go offering will permit development, QA, training, pre-sales demo and support teams to scale up or down the lab infrastructure as needed.
The new Cloud Edition will enable organizations to virtualize their test environment without the up-front capital expense of VMLogix's on-premise edition, Dholakia said. But even organizations that have already virtualized their test environment may either have excess capacity they only utilize when needed, or cannot afford the capacity to handle occasional peaks in workload, he said.
"When you have a highly variable demand pattern it can get expensive to handle a burst workload, and to staff your internal private cloud capacity to peak. The lion's share of time the infrastructure is not being taxed at peak, so despite being virtualized you still have a fair amount of excess capacity; and you still have to manage/maintain it yourself," Dholakia said.
He continued, "Our customers say they would love an internal private cloud to manage for a steady stream [of work], with the capability to burst out to the public cloud for peak demand, and they don't have to manage that in-house. That's why we believe the notion of bridging between the public/private cloud for a hybrid solution for the lab environment is the right answer."
VMLogix now joins its main competitors, Surgient and Skytap, with its support for the public cloud. "Certainly the cloud infrastructure is an area that the lab management space is going," said Chris Wolf, a senior analyst at Midvale, Utah-based Burton Group. "Starting a virtual lab environment in the cloud is a logical next step for a lot of organizations."
Depending on the needs of the organization, Wolf said they may choose to just burst to the cloud for busy periods if the cost makes sense, or leverage the public cloud entirely.
Today, among the vendors providing a virtualized test environment utilizing the cloud, Surgient and Skytap are "the big two, and have the attention of market," Wolf said, "but considering where VMware has gone with Lab Manager, I wouldn't discount them from providing [cloud capability]."
For VMLogix's part, Wolf said they have "established a good brand, being hypervisor agnostic. The other thing that has helped them is their OEM deal with Citrix."
While there are economic advantages to tapping the public cloud for testing, security remains a concern for those enterprises with sensitive customer data or those in highly regulated environments, Wolf said. "That's why typical enterprise customers are not touching [the public cloud] for production workloads or client data."
"Service providers say they have security," Wolf said, "but they're talking about security for data in transit, to move data between locations, but that doesn't address data at rest, which is a huge issue for shared infrastructure. And a showstopper for an auditor."
However, he said, the economics of the public cloud is compelling, and he expects more organizations to tap into it if they don't have infrastructure security concerns.
VMLogix LabManager – Cloud Edition beta is available now, and will be generally available in September. Pricing for the beta is free and requires an Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure subscription. Dholakia said VMLogix expects to announce partnerships with other public cloud infrastructure providers by the end of the year, and the hybrid edition is expected to be available in the fourth quarter.
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