mValent announced the availability of its Virtual Automation Module, an extension of its mValent Integrity application configuration management software designed for managing virtualized environments.

Server virtualization reduces the complexity of managing the operating system and hardware interactions, transforming the way corporate IT provisions and administers the data center. However, the complexity of managing the applications running inside a virtual server still exists. With both pre- and post-production application environments running on virtual servers – and hundreds of virtual images encapsulating these environments – keeping track of the code and configuration settings and ongoing changes to these virtual environments is increasingly a labor-intensive and high-risk effort.

mValent Integrity enables IT teams to capture the current state of code and configuration settings for virtual application environments, monitor them for authorized and rogue changes, and automate processes for provisioning changes and setting up new environments throughout the application lifecycle – from development, testing and through production. The result is greater application uptime, fewer IT fire drills and simplified compliance with industry best practices and regulatory mandates.

mValent Integrity provides a complement to other server virtualization management tools used to define and distribute standard software stacks. With the release of the Virtual Automation Module, customers can use mValent Integrity to:

• Customize and instantiate virtual environments with appropriate versions of code and configurations.
• Enable the rapid repurposing of existing virtualized software to support varying snapshots of the same or different applications.
• Perform ongoing configuration setting changes and provide a rich audit trail and version history to support compliance initiatives.
• Create comprehensive configuration snapshots as metadata for virtual images, enabling off-line capabilities such as comparisons to rapidly determine differences between the contents/configurations of different images.

According to Gartner’s report "When Servers Go Virtual: The Impact on Configuration Management”, “Planning and performing server configuration management in the virtual server world will have to take into account new dynamics that did not previously require attention in the physical environment." Gartner recommends that clients "purchase configuration management tools that can directly address the nuances introduced by a virtual server infrastructure.”

“The sprawl of virtual environments has shifted the focus of management complexity from the server to the software and applications running inside the virtual machine, driving up exponentially the unique configuration and release management challenges faced by application and middleware support teams,” said Joe Forgione, CEO, mValent. “With mValent Integrity’s Virtual Automation Module, we provide a comprehensive solution for automating deep configuration management and audit of application environments running on virtual and physical servers.”