No other virtualization platform vendor provides the breadth of VMware’s virtualization management solutions with production-proven technology. Only VMware offers a comprehensive solution for management of the virtual infrastructure over the entire lifecycle of the virtual machine. Best of all, VMware's management solutions integrate with your existing systems management tools so you can use what you already have and get a single point of control for physical and virtual machine management.
With VMware management solutions, you can:
- Centrally manage thousands of virtual machines
- Manage the entire software lifecycle with VMware solutions
- Automate disaster recovery
- Automate patching of virtual machines and hosts
- Use your existing systems management tools
- Get full support for all VMware vSphere features
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Automate Patching of Virtual Machines and Hosts
Patching is one of the most significant pain points for every IT department and it also needs to be addressed in virtual datacenters. Without a solution like VMware vCenter Update Manager, virtual machine proliferation could soon make it very difficult to maintain compliant environments.
VMware vCenter Update Manager lets you:
- Improve datacenter security against vulnerabilities by automatically retrieving patches for Windows, Linux and guest applications
- Reduce the risks associated with patching virtual machines by allowing fast rollbacks to a pre-patch stage
- Eliminate application downtime related to VMware ESX host patching
- Increase IT administrator productivity with unique automation capabilities
- Increase flexibility by allowing delayed reboot of virtual machines
VMware vCenter Update Manager is a fully integrated module of VMware vCenter Server. It does not require a complex installation or additional infrastructure. Microsoft’s System Center Virtualization Machine Manager (SCVMM) does not have integrated patching capabilities for virtual environments and requires Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM), which requires dedicated infrastructure, additional set-up, is another component to install, and involves a separate user interface (UI). Citrix XenServer only provides a patch tracking system that reports on the latest patch applied to a virtual machine. Users must manually keep track of patch availability, manually download patches and install them.
Automated Patching of Offline Virtual Machines
Only VMware supports automated patching of offline virtual machines directly out-of-the-box. Neither Microsoft SCCM nor Citrix XenCenter supports patching of offline or suspended virtual machines out-of-box. In May 2009, Microsoft released a separate, unsupported tool for patching offline virtual machines. But it still has considerable limitations (i.e. it can be used only on virtual machines in the SCVMM library and does not support suspended virtual machines).
See how VMware vCenter Update Manager can save almost $150,000 per year, in a 150 VM environment
| Features | VMware vSphere with vCenter |
Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V with SCVMM R2 |
Citrix XenServer with Essentials Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|
| Integrated Patch Management Wizard |  |
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| Installed as a Plug-In to the Management Interface | |
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| Secure Offline Patching of Virtual Machines | |
Loosely integrated add-on to SCCM |
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| Linux Virtual Machine Scanning | |
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| Zero-Downtime Host Patching | |
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| Maintenance Mode Support | |
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| Automatic Patch Downloads | |
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| Create Multiple Baselines | |
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| Automated Snapshots Prior to Patching | |
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| Integration with Dynamic Workload Placements | |
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