Virtual Machine Management Applications

Use Cases

VMLogix LabManager is an award winning virtual lab solution that integrates with the world’s leading virtualization platforms to empower development, test and support teams so they can build, snapshot, share and deploy production-like environments on-demand.

Using advanced automation capabilities, advanced team management and seamless integrations with leading build and test management solutions from HP and IBM, companies can dramatically reduce the manual effort, time and IT resources required to develop and maintain higher quality software applications.

Software Test And Development

As organizations grow globally and new hardware and software technologies emerge, enterprises, ISVs and SMBs find it increasingly difficult to keep the lab up to date, efficient, and effective. To improve processes in the test lab and to reduce the total cost of ownership, many organizations have turned to virtualization to create test labs that can maximize the use of limited physical resources and provide an environment that can be flexible enough to setup up and tear down test environments.
Virtual lab automation is a management system for automating the recurrent and labor-intensive manual tasks necessary in software testing, allowing processes and infrastructure to be streamlined and centrally managed. VLA ensures rapid, highly repeatable, resource-optimized deployments of complex, multi-machine build, test, and pre-production environments across virtual machines.

Features for Developers and Testers

Synchronized Multi-Machine Deployments

Deploy and synchronize multi-machine test scenarios without user intervention. Launch, suspend, resume, snapshot, revert, reset, showdown, capture, and share these deployments as a single encapsulated unit.

Global Multi-Site Development Support

Replicate, synchronize and share configuration libraries among multiple teams, locations, and outsourcing partners. Use fine-grained access controls to scope resource ownership by user, team, business unit, or company.

Image Builder

Build and rebuild multi-machine test configurations on-demand without manual user intervention.

Software and ISO Library

Build and share a central repository of operating systems and software media for easy provisioning into virtual machines.

Automation APIs

Integrate LabManager with existing tools and programmatically control all operations using XML/RPC and command- line interfaces.

Remote Multi-machine Console Viewers

View and interact with multi-machine test environments using VNC in a single browser window or Microsoft Remote Desktop.

Software Support And Help Desk Services

Organizations are quickly realizing strategic benefits through a shared resource pool that is consumed across the organization, including the software support division (Help Desk). With its low cost of ownership and high level of efficiency, virtualization reduces the capital costs required to build out test labs and shortens support resolution cycle times while maintaining SLA integrity.

Whether employing best practices or developing a support strategy from the ground-up, organizations need a strategy and design that employs virtualization to take advantage of the cost savings, flexibility, and agility through the ability to easily and quickly replicate customer environments to reproduce and resolve defects within specified SLA timeframes.

Features for Software Support and Help Desk Professionals

Self-Service Web Management Console

Allow distributed development teams to easily create, manage, share, and deploy build and test configurations based on self-service policies, quotas, and user permissions.

Shared Snapshots

Capture and share "live" multi-machine configurations from the configuration library. Captured configurations preserve memory and CPU state and can be redeployed instantly.

IP Zones

Allow multiple users to safely deploy concurrent copies of suspended multi-machine configurations without changing MAC addresses, static IP addresses or Windows SIDs.

Advanced Automation

Automate construction of production-like environments with end-to-end configuration of operating systems and applications. Use guest operating system operations and pre-packaged integrations with source code, build and test management tools to further reduce manual user effort.

Advanced Job Scheduling

VMLogix LabManager offers several options to manage multi-machine configuration deployments. Users can specify the priority of the job, specify the number of times a job is to be deployed, lease duration for a job and schedule a wait in the job deployment (i.e., a time after which the deployment is to occur)

Training And Education

The effective delivery of training and education requires a significant up-front investment from technicians and instructors to configure the training environment so that it mirrors that of the customer. Aside from the common benefits of virtualization such as saving on costs and on deployment operations, companies are quickly realizing that automation and management tools on top of the virtualization piece are driving even more savings. Since most training labs require that each student have access to a computer (either remotely or locally) the saving are in automating the time for each setup and deployment.

Features for Training and Education Professionals

Self-Service Web Management Console

Allow distributed development teams to easily create, manage, share, and deploy build and test configurations based on self-service policies, quotas, and user permissions.

Shared Snapshots

Capture and share "live" multi-machine configurations from the configuration library. Captured configurations preserve memory and CPU state and can be redeployed instantly.

Advanced Automation

User and Team Management - Enable Collaboration

Organize users (instructors and students) and scope the sharing of artifacts by organizational, functional and project teams so that only relevant artifacts are displayed for each team member. Also leverage advanced capabilities that allow instructors to hide machine roles (in a n-tier configuration) from students and easily add students to a class.

Advanced Job Scheduling

Delivering Software Sales Demonstrations

With the increased popularity of remote demos, and with the perceived ease of delivery, they have become an important tool for showcasing products and services to qualified buyers. However, the effective delivery of remote demos requires a significant up-front investment from sales engineers and product specialists to accurately configure the demonstration environment to make it relevant to the qualified audience.

Delivering effective demos extends beyond sales and touches many other parts of the business. Product managers and tradeshow booth staff also need to be able to provide demos to prospective customers, analysts, and the editorial community. By enabling on-demand and self-serve demo environments, users will be able to access corporate IT resources without the involvement of overworked and understaffed IT departments, and without requiring the help of the sales engineers who are working to help generate revenue. All they need is a laptop and secure connection to the corporate network.

Features for Sales Demonstrators

Self-Service Web Management Console

Allow distributed development teams to easily create, manage, share, and deploy build and test configurations based on self-service policies, quotas, and user permissions.

User and Team Management - Enable Collaboration in Software Development

Organize users and scope the sharing of artifacts by organizational, functional and project teams so that only relevant artifacts are displayed for each team member.

Advanced Job Scheduling

Security Controls and Audit Trails

Ensure system integrity with strict authentication, role-based access control, and comprehensive audit trails.