VMware presented a new virtualization products during its VMworld Europe 2009 conference in Cannes. Their names are vCenter Server Heartbeat and vShield. Both virtualization technologies bring it closer to supplying the data center operating system via its virtual machine management capabilities.

The company announced that the new name of "Virtual Center", its virtual machines provisioning and management server is now vCenter Server. In Cannes the virtualization producer presented vCenter Server Heartbeat, a software that enable IT engineers to monitor the central management server. VCenter Server Heartbeat works as automation solution which transfers operations to another physical server in the case of failure.

The new virtualization technology now makes possible for VMware to offer a greater guarantee of continuous operations, because it provides automated failover of the central VM management server.

VMware will sell VCenter Server Heartbeat for $4,995. The solution works in conjunction with vCenter Server, a product priced at $9,995.

The other data center product that VMware announced in the virtualization conference is vShield Zones. It is a virtual appliance for security which allows data center engineers to create logical zones with different levels of security based on groupings of virtual machines.

VMware executives explained that "instead of having to cordon off a group of Internet-facing servers with their own settings in a demilitarized zone, vShield allows a DMZ to be created among VMs that may be co-hosted on the same physical server with internal applications".

Using vShield, the enterprise users can segment applications based on their security needs and run them in a shared environment, covered by their zone's protections. The product will be released within the 3rd or 4th quarter of 2009. A beta release however is set to be released within a month or two.

More news about VMWare's new releases

VMware Adds To Data Center Operating System, "Mware's Heartbeat Offers High Availability for vCenter Server"