VMware’s master plan is starting to bear fruit.

When VMware introduced Virtual Infrastructure 3 (VI3), the company started to allow third parties to introduce their own plug-ins to the client. Initially, what we saw were folks in the VMware community building their own plug-ins to extend the functionality of the VI3 Client.

Perhaps the most well known was Andrew Kutz’s plug-in that added a GUI front-end to Storage vMotion before VMware developed its own. VMware also got in on the act, using the plug-in architecture to add functionality to the base vCenter install with VMware Update Manager and VMware Site Recovery Manager.

Now VMware’s partners — especially the OEMs and the storage vendors — are getting in on the act. When VMware first unveiled this plug-in approach, it seemed clear to me that the company was trying to build a core management platform (vCenter), whilst allowing others to extend its functionality. It was my prediction that VMware wanted vCenter to become the main management tool from where most system administrators would do their work. If successful, vCenter might even usurp vendor-specific management tools — especially if you can do 90% of your daily administration tasks more efficiently with a plug-in.

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been checking out the new raft of VMware vCenter plug-ins. I started off with the Dell Management Plug-in for vCenter (MPV), then worked with the EMC Virtual Storage Integrator (VSI) and NetApp Virtual Storage Console (VSC), and I will be soon doing a review of Dell EqualLogic’s Host Integration Tools for VMware.

Dell Management Plug-in for vCenter

The Dell Management Plug-in allows you to control the day-to-day management of Dell PowerEdge servers directly from vCenter. The plug-in adds a whole new series of Dell-focused alarms and alerts to the standard ones provided by VMware. And it enhances the standard monitoring of a physical host with views of the hardware, storage, warranty status and firmware.

Previously you might have used a special utility or management system from Dell to carry out firmware updates, but now these can be triggered directly from the vCenter plug-in. The Dell MPV also offers links to the Dell Remote Access Card (DRAC) interface and the OpenManage Server Administrator system, and it enables a way of deploying ESX hosts to brand-new hardware directly from inside vCenter.

Interestingly, rather than using PXE boot to transfer the install, the MPV communicates directly with DRAC on the Dell server. Even more useful are its abilities to configure the local RAID controller and join the installed ESX host to vCenter, with the option to apply a VMware host profile.

I think Dell’s approach gives a good steer on how all OEMs are going to focus on VMware as the primary management platform in the datacenter and integrate more closely with vCenter then they have ever dared to before. It’s recognition that VMware is the de facto hypervisor in the corporate space, and none of the vendors feel the need to swim against the prevailing tide.

VCenter plug-ins from storage vendors

On the storage side of the fence, all three of the big vendors — Dell, EMC and NetApp — have been busily developing new plug-ins, vying to be the one that most closely integrates with VMware. This competition will ultimately benefit all VMware admins, regardless of which storage vendor they happen to use. (I doubt very much whether the decision to go with one storage vendor over another rests so heavily on how well they integrate with VMware. Prices and existing relationships seem to have a greater an influence.)

I love what these storage vendors are doing. They are all offering very similar functionality with their plug-ins, and they are all capable of efficiently carving up storage from the disks that make up the array. Additionally, these storage plug-ins can also provision new virtual desktops and enhance the views of your storage within vCenter. They save you massive amounts of time and greatly simplify the process of providing new storage to your ESX hosts.

In fact, where once I prided myself on the ability to navigate around EMC Unisphere, NetApp System Builder and Dell EqualLogic Group Manager, I’m now seriously considering doing all main storage tasks via the vendors’ respective vCenter plug-ins. It’s so much quicker, and you’re less prone to make mistakes. (I don’t know about you, but really I’m more of server guy than a storage guy, so I don’t get to practice my storage skills as much as I should. So I will admit I’m the first to make errors in my administration at the storage layer. Anything that reduces my capacity to screw up on that front is heartily welcomed.)

VCenter plug-ins in the cloud

The other big deal about these storage plug-ins is their potential effect on cloud computing. Right now the “cloud administrator” has to work with the storage layer, slicing it up into various tiers and presenting it to the end user. This method is quite crude; it is very easy to provide more storage than is strictly necessary, and the creator-owner of the VMs in the cloud has little control over the placing of the virtual disks.

But imagine a situation where end users could create volumes/LUNs independently from a central storage pool, using vCenter plug-ins. If they create VMs for a project, they could create their own storage as they needed it. When they were done with their VMs, they would delete the VMs and their associated volumes/LUNs, handing that free space back to the storage pool.

Of course, this vision is rather grand. (The cloud has the tendency to make all those who consider it become starry-eyed.) But there are some obvious barriers. In the large corporate space, my customers who are VMware admins have said they love the idea of these storage plug-ins, but the sad reality at the moment is their storage teams wouldn’t let them use them; perhaps the storage teams fear that their importance to the whole of corporate IT would be diminished if VMware admins could provision their own storage.

Looking deeper into the issue, you recognize that that this self-provisioning model undermines years of careful, centralized storage management. The job of the storage guy is to make sure performance is great and that storage space is not wasted. If the storage team hands over the reins to the VMware admin, you could argue that not only would you have VM sprawl on your hands, but volume/LUN sprawl to boot. It seems we want two things that are in constant conflict with each other: We want self-service, demand-driven resource allocation, but we want to be control freaks, too. I’m wondering if there maybe more benefits if we learn to lose control.

Immediately, the talk was of how Dell partner (and VMware parent company) EMC would react. Dell’s acquisition of EqualLogic in late 2007 made things rocky between the companies behind the scenes, at least for a little while. The companies revised their OEM/reseller agreements, and Dell stopped referring prospects to EMC for high-end array sales. All along, EMC and Dell continued to insist that their relationship was as strong as ever. And they’re saying the same thing now, even though Dell has acquired a company that clearly competes with EMC.

But then again, as an analyst put it when we were discussing the deal yesterday, “there are ways to remain neutral publicly, but behind the scenes what can happen is very different.”

Some users, for example, already report having experienced contention between EMC and Dell following the EqualLogic deal, with VMware caught in the middle. One user in the public sector on the West Coast told me recently he stopped participating in his local VMUG after he said competitive strife between Dell / EqualLogic and EMC “made life difficult”.  The group had had a big Dell / EqualLogic membership, and wanted to bring in reps from those companies to speak, but the user said EMC was “moaning about bringing in someone seen as as a competitor — it was all very passive-aggressive.”

By now, Dell / EqualLogic seems fully entrenched in the VMware fold as the original shock of the EqualLogic deal has worn off. Dell / EqualLogic was one of the ‘design partners’ VMware said it sent a vStorage API SDK prior to other players in the storage market. But despite the fact that the SDK reportedly contained a ‘fourth primitive’ for integration of thin provisioning, and 3PAR was among the first in the storage market to popularize the feature, 3PAR was not a part of that early-access group. This may ultimately make little difference to end users, as most storage vendors (including 3PAR) by now have received the code. But early access for ‘design partners’ has given rise to the perception in some corners of the industry that VMware is capable of playing favorites in subtle ways.

Meanwhile, some industry-watchers have predicted that the 3PAR deal will make the rift between Dell and EMC widen even further, until there is a public split in addition to underground animosity. “Slowly but surely, Dell will wean its way off the EMC storage machine,” wrote Gary Orenstein at GigaOm. ”Not immediately, but eventually.”

Of course, similar predictions were made after the EqualLogic buy, and it has yet to come to pass. But it’s also increasingly clear that the “Balkanization” of IT vendors is continuing, even accelerating, and that server virtualization vendors have a fine line to walk when it comes to navigating these choppy waters.

Take, for example, the announcement by HP of a $250 million investment in technology development with Microsoft, just a few weeks after VMware CEO Paul Maritz participated in a cozy webcast announcing a new joint venture with EMC CEO Joe Tucci and Cisco CEO John Chambers.  HP denied it, but its subsequent alignment with Microsoft was widely seen as a direct response to VCE. Another big player, HDS, has also aligned itself with Microsoft, even OEMing Microsoft’s System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) as the basis for a forthcoming cloud computing “stack” offering.

Meanwhile, Oracle has already shown it expects users to run applications on only Oracle’s own Xen-based virtual machine (Oracle’s suggestion for users who don’t want to run more than one server virtualization environment to manage different applications? Move everything to Oracle VM). What’s to stop similar lines in the sand from being drawn around VMware and Hyper-V, as the infrastructure players open new competitive battlefronts as they build their ‘stacks’, and begin stepping on toes they haven’t stepped on before?

Nothing is for certain, but the issue warranting attention from virtual server users as these deals unfold is is the question of whether the zeal for soup-to-nuts “stacks” among large IT vendors — most of which are marketed as a stepping stone to the private cloud – will have an effect on their choices about which hypervisor to use with their preferred underlying hardware. It’s not that EMC will cease supporting Hyper-V if users require it, or that HP will kick out VMware completely. But I wouldn’t be surprised if infrastructure vendors are already beginning to steer prospective buyers toward the advantages of their special integrations with one hypervisor or the other, and it’s easy to imagine the subtle ways this could ‘make life difficult’ for virtualization users caught between shifting alliances.

Vendor lock-in is also a big concern when you’re talking about Oracle, especially now that it owns Sun and has plans to build its own Oracle VM machine.

But it turns out that even Oracle recognizes the importance of customer choice when it comes to virtualization. In a somewhat surprising bit of news today, hardware rivals Dell and Hewlett-Packard have certified Oracle VM, Oracle Enterprise Linux and Solaris and will sell those systems on their x86 servers.

With this news, the server virtualization market is getting about as complicated as the plot of “Inception.” Are Dell and HP REALLY reselling Oracle VM, or is it all in my mind?

Try to follow along: Oracle, HP and Cisco are all pushing converged infrastructure and virtualization-ready appliances. Oracle is the only one that has its own hypervisor and its own hardware, but the company still partners with HP and Dell, two of its major hardware competitors. HP has virtualization partnerships in place with both VMware and Microsoft, who don’t exactly get along. And Cisco’s focus is on its Unified Computing System and Virtual Computing Environment coalition with VMware and EMC. (And that’s not to mention the Microsoft-Citrix relationship, or the various partnerships that Red Hat and Novell have.)

Such tangled webs have always existed in IT, but they’re getting more tangled than ever before, and today’s news is one of the best examples yet.

Market dynamics aside, these Dell and HP deals are good for Oracle. Oracle VM has a tiny market share, so anything that makes it easier for customers to buy and deploy will help …

… unless this is all just a dream. Where’s my totem?