Brocade, Microsoft Team for Virtualization

May 1, 2008

Brocade is working with Microsoft to develop a management pack to incorporate the newly announced Performance and Resource Optimization (PRO) feature within Microsoft's System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008. PRO can help dynamically address alerts from hardware, operating systems and applications by shifting virtual machine resources using knowledge-based policies and rules. By extending many of the Brocade data center fabric and Host Bus Adapter (HBA) management capabilities into Virtual Machine Manager, this solution will help server administrators improve the management of their physical and virtual resources in data centers.

The new Brocade-focused management pack for PRO enables System Center to use specific device and network information such as overall health, performance, and configuration data. As a result, server administrators will have visibility beyond the confines of the server and into the storage network to help them make informed decisions on where to place, migrate, or reconfigure applications, hardware, or virtual machines.

"Customers continually ask for simpler ways to track and manage devices in the evolving data center, and virtualization magnifies that need," said Madhu Matta, Vice President of Brocade's Server Connectivity Division. "Brocade is working with Microsoft to provide seamless incorporation with System Center by extending Brocade Adaptive Networking technologies into the data center management solutions. This allows administrators to easily deploy and manage end-to-end data services such as virtualization, quality of service, and security across the entire data center fabric."

"Microsoft has collaborated with Brocade to provide customers with a scalable, high-performance storage infrastructure for virtualized IT environments," said Dai Vu, Director of Virtualization Products and Solutions Marketing for Microsoft. "Brocade's intelligent management of the SAN infrastructure, combined with Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager, helps customers optimize data and server resources in the virtualized data center."