On April 8, 2010, the Gestalt IT Tech Field Day Boston delegates visited the offices of VKernel. This discussion covered the company’s capacity and performance optimization technology and Optimization Pack, Capacity Analyzer, and Chargeback products. VKernel even invited a customer to talk about his use of their product. The session culminated with a roundtable discussion of the company, products, and market.
The delegates discuss their first impressions of VKernel’s product and the results it produces when run. They delve into the product’s positioning, and whether it has “legs” as VMware adds management features to the core product. Finally, the guest VKernel customer discusses his use of the product and the money he has saved by deploying it.
During Tech Field Day 2, several industry experts and practitioners shared their firsthand experiences with VKernel’s offering, particularly the capacity analysis tool. The feedback was largely positive, highlighting the tool’s speed, ease of deployment, and immediate insights into virtual environment inefficiencies such as over-provisioned VMs. Users appreciated that the VKernel appliance could be installed quickly and begin generating actionable data within minutes—making it an ideal solution for both small and large environments. Some panelists noted they were able to discover optimization opportunities that had previously gone unnoticed due to time or resource constraints, thereby validating the solution’s practical value.
Discussion then moved into product scalability, potential gaps, and the roadmap VKernel has to address them. Several delegates emphasized the importance of future developments, especially for larger data centers with thousands of virtual machines. Some pointed out that while the tool is currently suitable for smaller implementations, it would need federated appliance capability and better scalability to be competitive in large enterprise environments. Others noted that while advanced users could obtain similar insights through scripts, VKernel’s user-friendly interface and appliance-based deployment made it more accessible to a broader range of administrators. The tool’s ability to work in heterogeneous environments—including those running both VMware and Hyper-V—was also seen as a key benefit, adding to its utility in mixed-infrastructure settings.
Finally, a customer testimonial underscored the financial impact of using VKernel’s tools. The customer reported savings of over $3.7 million in server and storage costs by using the capacity analyzer to reallocate and right-size resources—delaying hardware purchases and justifying new investments with data-driven insights. The consensus was that while VKernel faces challenges, especially as VMware integrates more native management capabilities, its current offerings fill important gaps in capacity planning and optimization. With the appropriate focus on innovation and scalability, VKernel’s tools hold both short-term utility and potential long-term relevance in the virtualization ecosystem.
Personnel: Baas Rayman, Carlo Costanzo, Davang Panchigar, David Davis, Edward Haletky, Greg Ferro, Greg Knieriemen, Jason Boche, Matt Simmons, Robin Harris, Scott D. Lowe, Simon Seagrave
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