In July 2012 Gartner released its evaluation criteria for cloud management platforms (CMPs), the document, published from Gartner for Technical Professionals (GTP) is essentially a scorecard that helps the enterprises to autonomously assess or compare one or more products.
VMware vCloud Suite 5.1: In-Depth Assessment, also written by Alessandro Perilli and following Microsoft System Center 2012 SP1: In-Depth Assessment for Cloud Management, offers an evaluation of VMware’s well known CMP, with a deeply technical approach based on those criteria and the result is a precise image of the maturity level of this suite that could be a bad surprise for the virtualization giant.
As the name suggests vCloud Suite 5.1 is a bundle made of several products that can be resumed as follows:
- vCloud Automation Center (vCAC) 5.2
- vCloud Director (vCD) 5.1.2
- vFabric Application Director (vFAD) 5.2
- vCloud Connector (vCC) 2.0.0
- vCloud Operation Management Suite (vCOMS)
- vCenter Chargeback Manager (vCCM) 2.5
- vCenter Configuration Manager (vCM) 5.6
- vCenter Infrastructure Navigator (vCIN) 2.0
- vCenter Operations Manager (vCOM) 5.7
- vFabric Hyperic (vFH) 5.7
- vCloud Networking and Security (vCNS) 5.1.2a
- Manager (formerly vShield Manager)
- Edge (formerly vShield Edge)
- App (formerly vShield App)
- VXLAN
- vCenter Site Recovery Manager (vCSRM) 5.1.1
- vSphere 5.1
- vCenter Server
- Endpoint (formerly vShield Endpoint)
- vCenter Orchestrator (vCO)
Here is the table of contents as reported on Gartner’s website:
- Bottom-Line Assessment
- Product Scorecard and Feature Snapshot
- Strengths
- Weaknesses
- Reasons to Deploy
- Reasons to Not Deploy
- Analysis
- Required Features for Production
- Preferred Features for Production
- Optional Features for Production
Gartner Recommended Reading