Yesterday VMware released the first version of its new capacity planning product: vCenter CapacityIQ 1.0 (build 199314).
As the name suggests, the product performs capacity planning on virtual infrastructures, applying continuous what-if analysis to figure out the best arrangement for virtual machines in different scenarios.
It offers reporting and recommendations.
CapacityIQ is made of two components: a vCenter plug-in and a virtual appliance that collects data about the virtual infrastructure in a dedicated database.
The product is unable to automatically reconfigure the virtual infrastructure according to its own recommendations, which is probably fine for most customers.
Anyway some companies may find attractive the idea to review the recommendation and just approve them.
CapacityIQ price starts at $1,204 for 1 CPU plus 1 year of Gold support.
The choice to release the product now is strange. Originally announced in January, the version of CapacityIQ that VMware ships today doesn’t support vSphere 4, so customers that are interested in it already know that the adoption will oblige them to stick VI3.x still for some time.
With this product VMware introduces yet another front of competition (and friction) with its partners: Novell/PlateSpin, CiRBa, VKernel, Lanamark, newcomers like Liquidware Labs and 5ninee, indirect competitors like ManageIQ, Embotics and Fortisphere, may be, or will be, impacted over time.