Centralized Physical and Virtual Server Management Software for Fujitsu

As virtualization became standard in enterprise data centers, Fujitsu needed its server management software to cover more than physical hardware. The company planned to upgrade the existing ServerView suite and add controls for virtual machines, strengthening its position against other major infrastructure vendors.

The central challenge was not simply to add another management screen. Administrators needed a unified operational view of mixed environments, including the connections between physical hosts and their virtual workloads. The software also had to work across several platforms while preserving access to their native administration tools.

Fujitsu looked for a software development partner that could enter a technically demanding product environment without a long ramp-up period. SaM Solutions had already completed a prototype for the company. Building on that work, Fujitsu selected the SaM Solutions team as its primary development partner for the engagement.

SaM Solutions assembled a team with experience in enterprise software and infrastructure management. The engineers designed the new functionality around a service-oriented interface that translated operations across different virtualization technologies while presenting administrators with a consistent way to work.

The team incorporated the virtual management features into the ServerView environment rather than delivering them as a separate tool. This kept physical and virtual infrastructure within the same administrative context and reduced the need to move between unrelated consoles for routine tasks.

One view of physical and virtual resources

The team created visual navigation for the infrastructure topology. Administrators could see physical hosts, the virtual machines running on them, and the relationships between both layers.

This view made a mixed data center structure easier to follow. Instead of treating hardware and virtual workloads as separate inventories, the software connected them in a single management model.

Monitoring and event visibility

The suite monitored the status and resource utilization of both physical hosts and virtual machines. It also displayed events as they occurred, giving administrators a clearer picture of activity across the environment.

Bringing this information together helped operations teams assess infrastructure condition without checking each virtualization platform independently.

Virtual machine lifecycle controls

Routine virtual machine actions were available directly from the management console. Users could:

• Start and shut down the machines
• Suspend and resume workloads
• Restart the machines
• Add physical hosts to groups or server farms
• Remove hosts when infrastructure assignments changed

These controls covered common administrative work while keeping the workflow aligned with ServerView Operations Manager.

Support for heterogeneous virtualization environments

The software supported the virtualization products used in Fujitsu customer environments at the time, including:

• VMware ESX 3.5 and later versions
• VMware ESXi 3.5 and later versions
• Microsoft Hyper-V
• Xen 3.1 and later versions
• XenSource 3.1 and later versions at the Xen layer
• The full PRIMERGY server range

Administrators could access the native VMware or Microsoft Hyper-V management interface directly from the central console whenever they needed platform-specific features. This let them manage both environments through ServerView while retaining access to the tools provided by each vendor.

Integration with the existing ServerView environment

Compatibility with Fujitsu’s established software was a core requirement. The suite supported the Windows and Linux operating systems used by the Central Management Station and ServerView Operations Manager.

The resulting product version extended Fujitsu’s ServerView offering from physical server administration to combined physical and virtual infrastructure management. Customers could monitor resources, follow system events, and perform routine virtual machine operations from a central environment while retaining their existing hypervisor tools.

Fujitsu’s confidence in the SaM Solutions team grew during the engagement, leading to its involvement in a broader range of research and development work. The two companies took the virtual server management functionality from the earlier prototype stage through engineering, release, and ongoing product support.