DMTF standardizes virtual server management

The Distributed Management Task Force last week released a set of standard profiles the industry group says will help IT professionals manage virtual servers.

The DMTF System Virtualization, Partitioning and Clustering (SVPC) work group developed five profiles that are all based on the DMTF's Common Information Model (CIM) standard, an open standard for interoperable exchange of management information. According to the DMTF, basing standards on CIM helps IT managers more easily incorporate new standards and specifications into existing management tools.

"With the ever-increasing adoption of virtualization, DMTF aims to simplify and provide ease-of-use for the virtual environment by creating an industry standard for system virtualization management," says Winston Bumpus, DMTF president. (Follow the latest wares in our constantly updating Server Management Buyer's Guide.)

The profiles, available at the DMTF's Web site, enable capabilities to: discover and inventory virtual computer systems; manage the life cycle of virtual systems; create, modify and delete virtual resources; and monitor virtual systems for health and performance.

For instance, the System Virtualization Profile provides a service for manipulating virtual computer systems and their resources, while the Virtual System Profile defines basic control operations for activating, deactivating, pausing or suspending a virtual system, according to the DMTF. Other profiles include the Generic Device Resource Virtualization Profile, the Resource Allocation Profile and the Allocation Capabilities profile.

Virtualization software makers and management vendors participated in the development of the profiles and are working today to incorporate the standard into their products.

"End users and software vendors have been clear that they need to be able to leverage standards and avoid proprietary formats and licensing that lock them to a single vendor or platform. VMware's participation in and contribution to the DMTF SVPC work group reinforces our commitment to open, industry standards," said Stephen Herrod, vice president of technology development at VMware, in a statement.

IBM said it is putting the technology into its virtual management products. "The DMTF virtualization model brings a critical level of standardization to the data center, simplifying and extending the management of physical and virtual resources in heterogeneous environments. IBM is actively implementing these draft standards in IBM's Systems Director Virtualization Manager," said Rebecca Austen, director, IBM System Software, in a press release.

Next week, the work group will host a members-only "plugfest" in Santa Clara to test interoperability of products based on the SVPC specifications. A white paper detailing the CIM system virtualization model is available here.