Shavlik Technologies is the latest vendor to announcement support for VMware’s operating system for the cloud, with a move to enhance the patch and asset management capabilities of its security suite so that it can handle both physical and virtual machines running under vSphere.

The company said the big difference in its virtualisation function is that it now applies to the configuration management as well as the patch management capabilities of the Shavlik Security Suite. 

The asset management capabilities include a new ability to categorise as well as discover physical and virtual assets, which alongside the remediation capabilities of the suite provides a comprehensive management tool.

The system is good for the management of IT operations for both physical and virtual worlds, including offline virtual machines, the compay said.

A single process can be applied to ensure any physical or virtual machine is identified, secured, and managed across its lifecycle.

The tool will discover virtual machines as they are added to an VMware vSphere 4, VMware ESX, or VMware ESXi infrastructure, and ensure they are patched, and that any VM sprawl or configuration drift is contained. 

Mark Shavlik, CEO of Shavlik Technologies said, “In addition to patching and configuring the complete environment, we can now detect virtual machines as they are added and perform dynamic asset inventory, including resource usage management.”