Today at VMworld® 2011, Infoblox Inc. announced it is delivering a fully integrated plug-in for the VMware vCenter™ Orchestrator community. Working with VMware vCloud® Director, the integrated solution provides automated IP addressing and related management capabilities in real-time as virtual machines are created.
As a result, the Infoblox plug-in accelerates private and public cloud deployment, simplifies management and bridges network and virtual IT team silos by enabling automated assignment of IP addresses to virtual machines. Additionally, VMware vCloud® Director integrated with Infoblox delivers cloud infrastructure resources on-demand to provide maximum business agility using virtualized resources.
“The network infrastructure that supports a virtualized or cloud infrastructure needs to be at least as reliable and as dynamic as the new cloud-based, virtualized server infrastructure,” says Lucinda Borovick, research vice president, IDC. “If this is not the case, cloud initiatives will flounder on unreliable network architecture and services, limiting extensibility and the benefits that can ultimately be realized by an enterprise.”
Network Obstacles Impede Cloud Adoption
To date, most private cloud initiatives have been constrained by the necessary network infrastructure services required to support the virtual infrastructure. For example, virtual instances of servers and machines can be dynamically provisioned, migrated and shut down by a virtual server administrator in minutes. However, the necessary network services to support the virtual cloud infrastructure, such as IP address assignment and management, are still performed largely with manual tools and processes, such as spreadsheets shuffled between various enterprise departments, which can result in days of delays for something as simple as assigning an IP address to a virtual machine.
Infoblox Systems Enable Private and Public Clouds
To address these challenges, Infoblox delivers solutions optimized for highly dynamic virtualized and cloud environments with automated domain name system (DNS) resolution, IP address assignment (DHCP) and IPAM network services—all required in both physical and virtual environments.
The new Infoblox plug-in enables enterprise and service provider users of VMware vCloud® Director to access this functionality through VMware vCenter™ Orchestrator, which runs the associated workflow and automates the IP address and network resources needed by VMware vCloud® Director. With this integrated solution, administrators can now:
- Provision systems in minutes instead of days with automated IP address provisioning for Cloud infrastructure and services
- Improve reliability with automated HA/DR for critical underlying network services
- Simplify troubleshooting and reduce downtime with real-time visibility into physical and virtualized network infrastructure, including distributed VM-based Cloud stacks
- Manage movement between VM clusters easily with synchronization of critical DNS, DHCP and IP address services
- Eliminate errors introduced by manual processes
“Without an IP address, virtual machines have no presence in the network. Working with a provider of IP address management systems, such as Infoblox, helps us deliver seamless integration for this key component across all virtualized deployments for our customers,” says Dan Chu, vice president, cloud infrastructure and services, VMware. “Incorporating Infoblox technology into our vCenter™ Orchestrator interface, enables IP addresses to be automatically assigned to virtual machines in less than a minute and then constantly monitored and managed, which simplifies troubleshooting, accelerates time to value and offers greater flexibility for the virtual team.”
“The speed at which systems are moving and changing in a virtual environment requires a whole new automated approach to network infrastructure services,” says Steve Nye, Infoblox executive vice president of product strategy and corporate development. “We’re excited that the technology incorporated into our plug-in gives enterprise IT teams the flexibility and automated functionality they need to operate unfettered by conventional network systems and processes.”
For more Information about Infoblox and its products, visit: https://www.infoblox.com/en/products.html.
About Infoblox
Infoblox is an industry leading developer of network infrastructure automation and control solutions. Infoblox’s unique technologies, including the Infoblox Grid™—a real-time, data distribution technology—increase network availability and control, while automating time-consuming manual tasks associated with network infrastructure services like domain name resolution (DNS), IP address management (IPAM), network change and configuration management (NCCM) and network discovery, among others. Infoblox IPv6-ready solutions are used by over 5,000 organizations worldwide, including more than one third of the Fortune 500. The company is headquartered in Santa Clara, Calif., and operates in more than 30 countries.
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