(webhosting.info)   Vmware, a virtualization solutions provider, today announced the general availability of VMware Lifecycle Manager. The company states that the new product provides control over the virtual environment, showing who owns a virtual machine, when it was requested, who approved it, where it is deployed, how long it has been in operation and when it is scheduled to be decommissioned. It also adds that VMware Lifecycle Manager also gives IT managers the ability to measure and chargeback the use of virtual machines to individual department owners. The company claims that automation and control of the entire virtual machine lifecycle eliminates manual and repetitive tasks that often introduce errors, and it also enables the business to be in strict compliance with IT policies and standards.

The company articulated that VMware virtual machines encapsulate applications and operating systems in portable and manageable ‘containers’ that radically improve the security, availability and performance of both the application and the operating system. The portability and manageability characteristics of virtual machines makes them ideally suited for capturing and automating IT processes such as service delivery. As companies increasingly standardize on VMware Infrastructure and deploy virtual machines as a best way to run applications, secure data, assure business continuity and reduce energy consumption, they need efficient tools to help manage virtual machine proliferation. VMware Lifecycle Manager allows companies to implement a consistent and automated process for requesting, approving, deploying, updating, and retiring virtual machines.

“VMware Lifecycle Manager allows customers to fully automate the provisioning, charging back and decommissioning of virtual machines,” said Raghu Raghuram, vice president of products and solutions at VMware. “VMware Lifecycle Manager is integral to the many new products VMware is bringing to market to offer unprecedented levels of automation and control across datacenters.”