Vkernel announced that their product Vkernel Modeler has reached the Release Candidate state. Vkernel Modeler is a tool to simulate different scenarios regarding changes or additions to your VMware ESX data center.

So with Vkernel Modeler you can predict the impact changes in your virtual environment will have on performance.

You can download an try Vkernel Modeler here.

Gabrie van Zanten has evaluated the beta product and made a review.

I think this can be a very powerful tool in preventing issues in your virtual environment related to changes. Using modeler you get a rough idea of the impact your change (or someone else’s)  is going to have, which might influence the decision whether the change should be approved or not (given you use a decent change process of course).

Below are the release notes of this release:

Release Notes — Modeler – 1.0 RC

Improvements

• [VK–2259] — An ability to track unexpected runtime errors in UI was added
• [VK–2022] — Now users are allowed to set CPU manufacturer, model, and version
• [VK–1584] — An ability to move host into maintenance mode was added
• [VK–1779] — The host description in the inventory tree was improved
• [VK–1817] — A ‘connected/disconnected’ flag was added to model attributes
• [VK–1639] — Network storages were added to network topology
• [VK–1791] — An ability to add multiple equal VMs was added
• [VK–1793] — Dashboard view was restructured
• [VK–1467] — Dashboard is automatically refreshed with every action
• [VK–1671] — Summary reports for host in cluster now take into account enabled or disabled DRS
• [VK–1321] — Date was added to VM load graphs
• [VK–2053] — The Session Log toolbar functionality was improved
• [VK–2206] — An ability to undo a set of session actions was added
• [VK–1586] — An ability to refresh any session with new data from Virtual Center was added
• Importing objects from VE into modeling session was improved

Fixed bugs

• A number of graphs related bugs was fixed
• A number of bugs related to templates creation was fixed
• A number of UI bugs was fixed: misprints, UI hanging, etc