CiRBA announced that CiRBA's Placement Intelligence Technology now supports Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V virtualization platform. Using CiRBA, organizations can assess IT environments for Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V deployment opportunities, design enterprise-class environments and manage capacity on an ongoing basis.

CiRBA provides cross-platform, multi-dimensional analysis that enables organizations to safely and cost-effectively transform and consolidate heterogeneous environments and to maximize efficiency within virtualized infrastructure through dynamic capacity management. CiRBA's Placement Intelligence Technology complements Microsoft's System Center Virtual Machine Manager by analyzing technical compatibilities, business constraints, and utilization patterns, in order to determine optimal VM placements. CiRBA is unique in its consideration of technical and business constraints in addition to utilization levels, thereby providing an unmatched level of analysis that is critical in the design of new virtual environments (P2V) as well as the ongoing management of virtualized infrastructure (V2V). Reliance on utilization analysis alone significantly increases risk levels by ignoring important business processes and possible compliance and technical incompatibilities.

CiRBA's ability to analyze utilization trends and validate VM placements against anticipated demands also provides an early-warning system for IT environments, where potential risks and capacity shortfalls are identified ahead of time and sent as notifications to managers. Using CiRBA, IT staff can plan new VM placements according to anticipated changes in coming workload utilization patterns and leverage migration to maintain optimal VM placements without resorting to reactive responses when issues arise, thereby avoiding migrations during critical business hours. This provides proactive management of capacity within virtual environments.

"Many virtualization implementations force IT management to operate in a reactive mode, particularly when load-balancing alone is used to manage the dynamic capacity in virtual environments," said Andrew Hillier, co-founder and CTO of CiRBA. "CiRBA adds a proactive element to the equation, and when used with Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, the result is a properly planned virtual environment that is compliant with operational constraints and at the same time highly efficient because you can leverage migration to meet demand for capacity at controlled points in the operational cycle."

CiRBA has released Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V Rulesets that include technical and non-technical checks to determine Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V compatibility within an environment and define optimal configurations. In addition, CiRBA provides pre-packaged Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V P2V Analysis Templates that combine these Rulesets with hypothetical hardware target models, enabling organizations to conduct detailed "What-if?" analyses comparing alternate scenarios and virtualization candidates. Also CiRBA's Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V Health Check Analysis Template ensures the proper configuration of VMs on an ongoing basis.

"CiRBA's solution enables customers to achieve greater resource utilization and cost reduction through the use of Microsoft virtualization technologies," said Zane Adam, senior director of integrated virtualization at Microsoft. "By coupling these capabilities with Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, customers will more quickly be able to realize the operational and financial benefits and adapt to ever-changing business needs by better maintaining optimal VM placements into the future."