OVERVIEW
The more expansive your server infrastructure, the higher the likelihood you were an early adopter of server virtualization. Chances are you also support diverse applications and end user requirements with a range of technical, service level, regulatory and cost constraints. Despite the fact that over two thirds of enterprises have deployed heterogeneous virtual infrastructure, hybrid management solutions are very limited. Hypervisors may be largely commodity in function, but advanced management capabilities are integrally coupled with specific hypervisors. So mixing and matching is a big problem. Tackling this problem historically involved one of the following approaches.
Option 1 — the ‘Single Vendor Silo.’ Standardize on a single native management toolset and related virtual infrastructure (like VMware vCenter and vSphere) for select applications and use cases. With this approach you have the benefit of tools designed to work together. But you typically pay high license fees, are locked into a single vendor, have constrained technical choices and cannot readily automate across silos.
Option 2 — the ‘Management Overlay.’ Deploy multiple native management tools with an overlay management layer to handle basic operating functions (like Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager plus VMware vCenter managing Hyper-V and vSphere). This approach provides more hypervisor flexibility but increases the skill requirements and more than doubles the complexity of deployment, operations and ongoing maintenance.
What if you had a 3rd option in which the entire virtual infrastructure is transformed, fully decoupling hypervisors from management tools so you can mix and match at will? The HotLink SuperVISOR™ platform was engineered from the ground up for interoperability of virtual infrastructure. Unlike management overlay solutions, HotLink enables you to natively support other hypervisors with your existing virtualization management tools — no additional management console required!
- Mix & match hypervisors
- Extend existing management tools cross-platform
- Apply policy-based automation across all infrastructure
- Leverage existing skills
- Eliminate vendor lock-in
- Dramatically reduce infrastructure costs
You made the investment to virtualize your server infrastructure to add agility and reduce cost — not to lock your organization into an overly constrained environment or break the bank in the process. With HotLink’s innovative technology, you finally have the ability to pick the right virtual infrastructure for each use case while leveraging the management investment you already made.