Automated capacity control adds Hyper-V support

CiRBA has announced the availability of CiRBA Version 8. With this release, CiRBA adds support for Microsoft® Hyper-V® to its award-winning Control Console, which enables organisations to maximise efficiency and minimise risk in virtual and cloud infrastructure. This new capability is a key addition to CiRBA’s already strong platform support, which includes VMware® ESX®, IBM® PowerVM®, and Red Hat® Enterprise Virtualisation.
Also now shipping in Version 8 is CiRBA’s new Reservation Console, announced last Autumn, which automates the entire process of selecting the optimal hosting environment for new workloads and reserving compute and storage capacity. The Reservation Console combines with CiRBA’s cross-platform support to enable CiRBA customers to automate “fit for purpose” placements for new workloads across multi-hypervisor, multi-SLA, multi-site virtual and cloud environments.

“The shift toward cloud is placing less emphasis on the specific hypervisor technology and more on the capabilities it provides,” said Andrew Hillier, CTO and co-Founder of CiRBA. “Having a scientific way to make hosting decisions across all hypervisors and hosting platforms really opens up the playing field and allows organisations to focus on the bigger picture of enterprise-level supply and demand.”

Concerns about vendor lock-in and hypervisor costs are driving more and more organisations toward multi-hypervisor adoption. In fact, according to research by Torsten Volk of EMA, 82% of organisations plan to adopt more than one hypervisor.

Multi-hypervisor adoption, particularly within private clouds, can present a significant management challenge for organisations in determining which workloads should be hosted on each respective platform. In order to help combat the complexity, organisations need to change how they make workload placement decisions.

“We currently leverage CiRBA from a cross-platform capacity control perspective. As we seek to automate and more closely balance infrastructure supply with the demands of the business, the capabilities found in CiRBA Version 8, and specifically coverage of even more hypervisor technologies, will be a welcome addition,” said Matt McCarter, server engineering lead at McKesson Corporation.

CiRBA’s Hyper-V® support spans the entire scope of CiRBA functionality. Within the Control Console, organisations use it to achieve daily operational control over VM placements and create predictive forward looking views incorporating capacity reservations for new workloads providing unmatched accuracy in forecasting requirements. Within the new Reservation Console, the addition of Hyper-V can have a significant impact on workload routing decisions and clearly exposes the relative advantages of different hypervisors from a cost and fit for purpose perspective.

“Organisations are keeping their options open and our new release removes a lot of the barriers that would prevent multiple hypervisors and cloud technologies from being adopted,” continued Hillier. “We are very excited to bring this new level of operational control and automation to Hyper-V® infrastructure, making it an even more viable option.”