VKernel Gets Millions
VKernel just got $4.6 million in funding. The money will go toward advancing product development, increasing sales and expanding market awareness, according to a press release announcing the cash influx. Sounds like a good use to me.
VKernel makes two products: a capacity analyzer, so you can tell how many VMs you can add to a pool of resources, and be alerted to processing bottlenecks in your virtual environment; and a very interesting tool called a chargeback virtual appliance. The idea behind a chargeback appliance is that you can determine which virtual resources are being used by which computers in a company, and the value of that usage. So, for example, you can find out just how much more the Engineering department is costing you, in terms of computing resources, than Accounting. A useful tool, I'd say, around budgeting time.
Note that VKernel's products are ESX Server-specific; nothing to help those of you on Xen, Hyper-V, Virtual Server, etc.
Network Computing has a good review of the Chargeback Virtual Appliance. It gives it strong marks in general, while pointing out several areas in need of improvement.
Is this something that appeals to you? Are you already using chargeback technology, or would you consider it? Let me know.
Posted by Keith Ward on 02/06/2008 at 12:48 PM