VMware Introduces VMware vCenter™ Log Insight™ 2.0 - Advances Intelligent Operations and Log Management Across Virtual and Hybrid Cloud Environments

New Release of VMware vCenter Log Insight Offers 6x Better Query Performance than the Log Analytics Leader; Simplifies Root Cause Analysis and Proactively Addresses IT Issues

PALO ALTO, Calif., May 20, 2014 — Advancing intelligent cloud operations through new analytics capabilities, VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW) today unveiled VMware vCenter Log Insight 2.0, VMware’s automated log management and analytics product for the mobile-cloud era. The new release of VMware vCenter Log Insight introduces machine-learning technology in conjunction with significantly improved query and data collection performance that will help customers speed problem resolution and further automate IT operations across physical, virtual and hybrid cloud environments.

“IT organizations continue to be overwhelmed with massive amounts of unstructured log data generated by their virtual and hybrid cloud environments,” said Ramin Sayar, senior vice president and general manager, Cloud Management Business Unit, VMware. “With VMware vCenter™ Log Insight™ 2.0, we’re doubling-down on our unique predictive analytics-based approach to log management. VMware vSphere^® customers, including general IT operations, security, applications and DevOps teams will be able leverage the power of VMware vCenter Log Insight 2.0 to analyze machine data for actionable insight to prevent system downtime.”

“The VMware vCenter Log Insight console gives us a quick overview of our virtual environment to understand what’s transpired over the last 24 hours and beyond,” said David Kelly, service deck manager at Beaumont Hospital. “We are now able to see trends and event activity to help us identify issues around storage that would have been difficult to pinpoint without log analytics. VMware vCenter™ Log Insight™ has helped us find issues we didn’t know were there — leading to improved IT services with fewer problems and improved availability.”

New Capabilities, Improved Performance and Scalability to Increase IT Operations Productivity

Today, VMware vCenter Log Insight helps customers to identify IT issues 25 per cent faster, speed resolution times by 50 per cent, and reduce log analysis time by up to 80 per cent¹. To further help customers proactively meet service levels and improve operational efficiency, VMware vCenter Log Insight 2.0 will introduce the following new capabilities and enhancements:

• Intelligent Grouping – A new machine learning-based technology that automatically groups related data to help administrators spot problems more rapidly and reduce time-to-resolution;
• Query Performance – 6x faster query performance than the market leading solution will improve productivity levels of administrators and IT operations teams²;
• Data Ingestion – 8x faster data collection over VMware vCenter Log Insight 1.5 can speed insight into more of customers’ physical, virtual and cloud environments³;
• Data Visualization – New data visualization capabilities in the form of tables and chart types will provide administrators with increased options for analyzing unstructured log data; and,
• Extensibility – A new native Microsoft Windows agent will collect logs from Windows-based desktops and servers, enabling customers to now capture and analyze log data across all key environments.

Unstructured machine-generated big data contains valuable operational details regarding IT infrastructure that can be used to detect and troubleshoot IT problems. VMware vCenter Log Insight can deliver real-time insights and monitoring of data from applications, virtualized infrastructure and physical hardware to help improve operational efficiency through automation and simplify IT troubleshooting. VMware vCenter Log Insight delivers the performance and scalability required by IT organizations for visualizing and analyzing multi-terabyte datasets. It also enables customers to easily install and use, Integration between VMware vCenter Log Insight and VMware vCenter™ Operations Management Suite™ further enables organizations to combine and analyze both structured and unstructured data for end-to-end operations management.

New Content Packs Provide Increased Visibility Across More Physical and Virtual Environments
Beyond providing built-in knowledge and native support for VMware vSphere, VMware vCenter Log Insight enables customers to extend log analytics capabilities to infrastructure software and hardware commonly found in virtual and hybrid cloud environments. In conjunction with VMware vCenter Log Insight 2.0, VMware is introducing four new content packs for Brocade Fibre Channel storage area networks (SANs) as well as for Microsoft Active Directory, Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft Windows. The Brocade SAN Content Pack leverages Brocade Fabric Vision technology to enhance the innovative machine-learning functionality and improved query and data collection capabilities that will be available with VMware vCenter Log Insight 2.0 to provide systems administrators with a complete view of SAN health and behaviour across physical, virtual and hybrid cloud environments. It encapsulates 15 years of Brocade expertise for rapid resolution of networking issues to help administrators improve operational efficiency and reduce IT costs. The Windows Operating System Content Pack will deliver accurate monitoring of customer Windows infrastructure, including coverage of essential Windows categories, including events, applications, and logons.

Produced using VMware vCenter Log Insight without any coding, content packs encapsulate pre-defined log queries, extracted fields, pre-built dashboards and product-specific alerts, helping customers to pinpoint IT issues rapidly and simplify troubleshooting. Available at no charge, the content packs are downloadable from the Log Insight Marketplace on the VMware Solution Exchange at:
https://solutionexchange.vmware.com/store/loginsight

New Upgrade Delivers Advanced Capabilities for VMware vSphere^® with Operations Management™ Customers

Today, VMware also announced a new upgrade path for VMware vSphere with Operations Management, which combines the world's leading virtualization platform with insight into IT capacity and performance.

New and existing VMware vSphere with Operations Management customers will now be able to take advantage of greater management and monitoring capabilities by upgrading to VMware vCenter Operations Management Suite Advanced. The advanced edition provides customers with enhanced unified management across VMware vSphere and associated storage infrastructure, configuration management, application auto-discovery and dependency mapping, and the extension of operations management to operating system resource monitoring of Linux and Windows virtual machines, among other capabilities.

Pricing and Availability

VMware vCenter Log Insight 2.0 is available for download here via a public beta program today. It is expected to be available in Q2 2014. To be notified when VMware vCenter Log Insight 2.0 is available, sign up at: http://eepurl.com/T_nen

VMware vCenter Log Insight 2.0 is priced US$200 per operating system instance with no log data size limits offering customers a predictable pricing model and no price penalty for storing more log data. It is also now available for US$1,500 per CPU.

Go to VMware vCenter Log Insight Pricing/Buy page.

VMware vCenter Operations Management Suite Advanced for VMware vSphere with Operations Management is expected to become available in Q2 2014.

Additional Resources

• Read a blog post by Sajai Krishnan, vice president of product marketing, Cloud Management Business Unit, VMware
• Learn more about VMware vCenter Log Insight
• Dimensional Research: Learn more about what vCenter Log Insight customers have to say
• Visit the vCenter Log Insight Marketplace on VMware Solution Exchange
• Visit the VMware vCenter Log Insight Community
• Connect with VMware on Twitter and Facebook
• Connect with VMware Canada on Twitter

About VMware

VMware is the leader in virtualization and cloud infrastructure solutions that enable businesses to thrive in the Cloud Era. Customers rely on VMware to help them transform the way they build, deliver and consume Information Technology resources in a manner that is evolutionary and based on their specific needs. With 2013 revenues of US$5.21 billion, VMware has more than 500,000 customers and 75,000 partners. The company is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the world and can be found online at www.vmware.com. VMware Canada is headquartered in Burlington, Ont., and can be found online at www.vmware.com.

VMware, VMware vCenter, vCenter Log Insight, Operations Management Suite and VMware vSphere are registered trademarks or trademarks of VMware, Inc. in the United States and other jurisdictions. All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies. The use of the word “partner” or “partnership” does not imply a legal partnership relationship between VMware and any other company.

(1) Dimensional Research, “VMware vCenter Log Insight Delivers Immediate Value to IT Operations”, May 2014
(2) Third-party query performance test comparing leading log analytics solution and VMware vCenter Log Insight 2.0 on 100 million and a billion record data sets, February 2014
(3) VMware vCenter Log Insight 2.0 enables a cluster of up to six nodes while improving individual node ingest performance by up to 30 percent leading to 8x faster data ingestion than before

For more information please contact:
Amanda Balla / Cindy Watson
StrategicAmpersand Inc.
amanda@stratamp.com / cindy@stratamp.com
(416) 961-5595