Dell Software today announced the release of Foglight^TM for Virtualization, Enterprise Edition (formerly vFoglight Pro).  Building on the success of the Quest vFoglight™ Pro virtualization management solution, Dell has re-branded vFoglight to Foglight for Virtualization to better align the solution as a core component of the Foglight family, and has added performance monitoring support for VMware View to the product.

Foglight for Virtualization, Enterprise Edition offers virtualization server and system administrators the ability to manage both data center server virtualization, as well as desktop virtualization, with added capabilities to track virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) performance from the application level all the way to the server and storage hardware level, providing the greatest breadth and depth for virtualization management of any product available in the market today.

“Foglight for Virtualization, Enterprise Edition, shows Dell’s commitment to offering a solution that encompasses all aspects of virtual infrastructure performance monitoring and management, built on a platform that can scale as the infrastructure grows,” said Steve Rosenberg, general manager for Performance Monitoring, Dell. “This new release expands Foglight’s ability not only to monitor the additional infrastructure area of VDI, but also to correlate metrics from VDI with performance for applications, the virtual layer, the network, and underlying servers and storage.”  

“As more and more enterprises run business-critical applications on virtual environments, the ability to pinpoint performance issues is becoming a necessary component to ensure a healthy bottom line," said Bernd Harzog, analyst, Performance and Capacity Management, The Virtualization Practice. "Downtime costs money, so it’s essential that IT have the capability to address performance issues before they impact business operations. With visibility into the entire virtual infrastructure, including monitoring support for VMware View, Dell’s Foglight for Virtualization, Enterprise Edition affords IT the ability to move quickly to solve problems anywhere they may occur, saving the enterprise both time and money.”

With the increasing adoption of VMware View in virtualized data centers, VDI support is fast becoming a mainstay for today’s IT departments and managed service providers. VDI and server virtual machines (VMs) often utilize the same hardware components. Yet, both of these virtualized infrastructures serve different users and have separate requirements and resource demands. As a result, VDI and server VMs require dedicated performance monitoring systems; however, these systems must also be connected because so many underlying resources are often shared. Foglight for Virtualization, Enterprise Edition offers virtualization administrators a single-source solution that not only identifies and fixes performance issues within VMware View, but continues to run all features available in vOPS Server Enterprise with no affect on overall vCenter performance. 

Foglight for Virtualization, Enterprise Edition is an enterprise-caliber solution that delivers full visibility and control over virtualized environments via its “Triple-A” approach - analysis, advice and automation - that provides virtualization admins with concrete, actionable and easily implemented answers to their management challenges. The Foglight for Virtualization, Enterprise Edition solution covers all forms of virtualization, including virtualized server, cloud and VDI environments.

In conjunction with this release, Foglight for Storage Management 2.5, which is an optional cartridge to Foglight for Virtualization, Enterprise Edition, has been released. Foglight for Storage Management now offers physical storage performance reporting in addition to virtual reporting, providing customers with complete ‘VM to physical LUN’ visibility.  Additional enhancements in this release include LUN latency reporting, NPIV support, and the ability for customers to purchase the product either as a stand-alone cartridge, or as an optional cartridge to Foglight for Virtualization, Enterprise Edition.

Additionally, Foglight is a unified performance monitoring platform that allows individual product solutions, delivered as sets of pluggable “cartridges,” to run stand-alone or to interoperate. Each individual product delivers best-of-breed functionality to the admin for that area, while simultaneously integrating with other cartridges to deliver true end-to-end monitoring from end-user experience to the underlying storage and server hardware layers, and everything in between. This unified platform enables effective cross-domain collaboration, and dramatically reduces the time required to resolve critical issues.

News Facts:

• Integrated performance monitoring across the entire data center infrastructure

Foglight for Virtualization, Enterprise Edition integrates monitoring data from the VDI level to other infrastructure components including OS, application, network, server, and storage hardware. This allows for holistic troubleshooting of issues across the many areas where problems can originate and affect VDI. 

• Scalable solution for midsize enterprises to the Global 2000

 Foglight for Virtualization, Enterprise Edition gives system administrators a complete view of performance problems, regardless of network size and infrastructure components. Tools that do not have this capability can only provide insight into a subset of issues that are localized at the VDI or server VM level. Foglight for Virtualization, Enterprise Edition includes analytics, and offers advice and automation to resolve issues well beyond the VDI level, including the application and the server and storage hardware levels. The integrated monitoring capabilities identify and fix performance issues in the virtual environment with little need for professional services or custom development.

• Single source solution for managing the entire virtual network infrastructure

With Foglight for Virtualization, Enterprise Edition, Dell delivers on its market promise by providing a single, unified virtual appliance that manages the entire network infrastructure, including the extension of capabilities to VDI environments running VMware View.

Additional New Features of Foglight for Virtualization, Enterprise Edition 6.8:

• Proactive monitoring of VMware View without using multiple tools
• Support for Windows Server 2012
• Enhanced  installation agent and agent host management
• New “Getting Started” wizard
• More granular virtual data collection

Supporting Resources:

• Quest Software, Inc.: http://quest.com/
• More Dell Quest news: http://www.quest.com/newsroom/
• Twitter: http://twitter.com/quest
• Facebook: http://www.quest.com/facebook
• LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/
• Quest TV: http://www.quest.com/tv/

General Availability Foglight for Virtualization, Enterprise Edition 6.8 is available now for a 45-day trial from www.quest.com. Pricing starts at $799 per socket.  Foglight for Storage Management 2.5 is also available now for a 45-day trial from www.quest.com.  Pricing starts at $499 per socket.