Start-up vendors looking to grab some of the management software spotlight at VMworld 2008 next week recently released free software downloads designed to help IT managers track and search data on virtual machines (VM).

Embotics, which dubs its technology VM lifecycle management, released a scaled down and free version of its flagship V-Commander application. Called V-Scout the no-cost download helps IT managers generate reports from data dispersed across their virtual environment. Using no agents, the centralized management application complements V-Commander's policy-based management capabilities by delivering data that can help IT managers associate costs to VMs and determine how VMs have changed over time. (Click here to see a slideshow of products being showcased at VMworld 2008.)

"We want virtual users to download the product and start to understand what is happening in their environment and get a better idea of what the unique dynamics of their environment are," says David Lynch, vice president of marketing at Embotics. "And once they do that they get to the stage of how to control it, we hope they will give us a shot at helping them control it."

Using V-Scout, virtual systems administrators can associate customer information such as business owner, application, expiry date and project name with VMs. And if V-Scout users decide to upgrade to Embotics V-Commander enterprise offering, the free application will integrate and populate it with the customized reports automatically. V-Commander software installs on a server and requires an account with VMware's VirtualCenter to gain access to VMs. It doesn't use agents to collect data, and it provides centralized policy-based management of VMs.

Separately, fellow start-up VKernel also launched a free application to help virtual administrators search across virtual machines, hosts, clusters, storage, resource pools, files, snapshots, applications and configuration information. The vendor equipped the application with more than 75 attributes that can be indexed and available for search in VMware ESX Server environments.

SearchMyVM, like all of the applications in the VKernel suite of virtual appliances, snaps into a VMware ESX server infrastructure similarly to how a user would add a virtual machine. The vendor's virtual appliances share a common database to avoid redundant network discoveries and auto-synchronize with VMware’s VirtualCenter to continually update itself to changes in hosts, clusters, and resource pools in a truly dynamic environment, the company says.

Denise Dubie is senior editor with Network World.