VMware Infrastructure 3 is a hard act to follow (see the review). When VI3 was originally released, it not only set the bar for all virtualization solutions in its wake, but was so polished that many shops put it into production immediately, with no ill effects. Yesterday's release of "VMware Infrastructure 3 with ESX Server 3.5 and VirtualCenter 2.5" (yeah, that's the official name) hopes to continue the trend of stable, function-rich releases from the leader in virtualization. Based on what I've seen in the beta code I've been testing, it'll be a close call.

The Bottom Line VMware Infrastructure 3 with ESX Server 3.5 and VirtualCenter 2.5 VMware, vmware.com Beta   Cost: $995 per pair of processors for Foundation edition; $2,995 per pair of processors for Standard edition; $5,750 per pair of processors for Enterprise Edition, including Consolidated Backup, Update Manager, High Availability, VMotion, Storage VMotion, Distributed Resource Scheduler, and Distributed Power Management. Platforms: ESX Server runs on Intel- and AMD-based hardware and supports Windows, Linux, Solaris, and other major operating systems as guests; introduces support for paravirtualized Linux guests Bottom Line: VMware's ESX 3.5 and VirtualCenter 2.5 release adds several key management features to the leading server virtualization platform. Waiting in the wings is a new embedded version of the ESX hypervisor, which will obviate the need for local disks in a VMware host server. The beta releases have been relatively buggy, and more than a few host crashes and puzzling errors were seen in the lab. But if those problems are ironed out in the production release, the new features will definitely be a hit with customers. About our Reviews and Scoring Methodology

I've been running ESX Server 3.5 and VirtualCenter 2.5 in the lab for weeks now, using the code provided from VMware's beta program. The highlights of the new VI3 release include new features such as live storage migration and distributed power management, plus a bevy of new add-ons – for example, an automated patch manager and a tool for capacity planning and P2V migration.

The big news in the updated VI3 isn't the core functionality – VMotion, Distributed Resource Scheduler, High Availability, and Consolidated Backup have been in customers' hands for more than a year now. There are a few little additions here, such as Cisco Discovery Protocol support on ESX hosts (which makes switchport location trivial), but the larger story is in the management additions to the base packages.

Snap and patch
One of the most prominent of these is Update Manager, essentially an automated Windows and Linux patch manager application specifically designed for virtual machines. It allows admins quick and easy access to reports on outstanding security patches and bug fixes that apply to one or more VMs, and to schedule the installation of those patches. Update Manager traces its ancestry to Shavlik's HFNetChk and functions in a similar fashion. The key difference is that it automatically takes a snapshot of the VM's current system state before applying the update or patch, providing a safety net that is crucial for maintaining stability across a virtualized environment.

Update Manager also significantly eases some of the administration burden found in manual or outboard patch management solutions. Essentially, applying patches to one or more VMs is as simple as selecting them and running through a wizard. Once that's done, it takes a snapshot of each VM, the updates are applied, and the VM is rebooted. If something has gone awry and the VM becomes unstable, it can be quickly restored to a known-good state from that snapshot. The length of time to retain these snapshots is also configurable, which reduces storage overhead while still providing a time-limited backup plan.

In the beta, this feature functioned reasonably well, although it seems to be more in tune to Windows patches than Linux patches, and it does raise some questions about automated patch installations on some Linux distributions. For instance, CentOS is essentially Red Hat Enterprise Linux without any branding or support, and is technically unsupported on VMware, but Red Hat patches can be applied to CentOS systems, which may be problematic from a licensing standpoint. The beta produced several interesting errors while running Update Manager, but no showstoppers. It's a wide-ranging feature that could wreak havoc with an otherwise stable infrastructure if not closely controlled, but we'll have to wait for the released code to accurately gauge its stability and reliability.

Backfield in motion
Called Storage VMotion, live migration of virtual hard disks is another eagerly anticipated new feature. The original VMotion is used to migrate VMs from one ESX host to another, provided that each ESX host shares access to the same central storage volume on an NFS, iSCSI, or Fibre Channel device. With Storage VMotion, running VMs can be migrated between data stores as well as ESX hosts. This opens up several new backup and load-balancing scenarios as well as providing a means to ensure suitable VM performance across multiple data stores.