Oracle has released version 4.1.8 of its virtualization platform VM VirtualBox. This version which can be considered a maintenance release can be installed on top of any VM VirtualBox 4.1.x installation and is the follow up of version 4.1.6. which was released in November this year.

This version fixes a couple of issues which are described in the changelog.

VKernel, recently acquired by Quest Software has released version 4.5. of its vOperations Suite (vOps). vOperations is a suite of products providing Performance Analysis, Capacity Management, Resource Optimization, Reporting and Chargeback functionality for VMware and Hyper-V environments.

This version lacks the support for Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV), which the company announced in August and promised to deliver in Q4 this year.

vOperations Suite 4.5 adds the following new features:

· Added Automation features

o Auto deletion of abandoned VM images

o Auto-merging of unused snapshots

o Automated remediation for performance issues

o Auto-calculation of future resource requirements

o Automatic generations of alerts of abnormal metrics and trends

· Automation processes can now be more specifically controlled

· Support for VMware vSphere 5 storage DRS and storage clusters, new HA methods and inclusion of data from the VASA storage interface

· Reporting enhancements, like new reports, customize data tables, reporting widgets, dashboards

· Virtualization Cost Index now calculates the base cost for operating a VM