I already blogged about it, but the new product VMware Stage Manager is now available as a beta download. Try it! Key features in this release:
- Rapidly create new multi-server software configurations (services)
- Monitor resource usage on a per-service, per-stage and per-instance basis
- Easily perform operations on a complete service (e.g. cloning, deploying, archiving, etc.)
- Marshall changes across the service lifecycle, interacting with external process management/workflow system to ensure compliance with service transition policies
- Maintain an archive of past service configurations supporting compliance and recovery operations
- Maintain an auditable history of software configuration changes
- Manage storage behavior on a per-stage basis to maximize storage efficiency
- Control access to services on a per-service, per-stage and per-instance basis
- Inherit then deploy services to resource pools created within VMware VirtualCenter