VMware is stepping up efforts to deliver on its vision of the software-defined datacentre with the acquisition of Virsto, a storage virtualisation vendor, while also rolling out automation tools in the shape of vSphere with Operations Management.

The firm said it has entered a definitive agreement to acquire Virsto Software, whose storage hypervisor technology is aimed at bringing the same kind of optimisation and flexibility to enterprise storage that VMware has already delivered to servers.

VMware said that the move will fill a gap in its current capabilities, helping to optimise storage alongside its existing technologies for managing server and networking resources.

“Our customers have told us that managing performance and data services for virtual machines can be challenging, especially in I/O-intensive environments like virtual desktops,” said John Gilmartin, vice president of storage and availability, writing on VMware’s blog.

Virsto offers a storage management platform that can accelerate I/O performance on any block-based storage system while providing services such as virtual machine snapshot and cloning capabilities, Gilmartin added.

VMware plans to continue to offer Virsto’s standalone virtual appliance for vSphere in the short term, but is looking to integrate Virsto’s architecture and data management services into future VMware products further down the road.

As part of the same vision, VMWare also unveiled vSphere with Operations Management, integrating the vSphere platfrom with a tool to deliver automated operations for vSphere deployments.

This uses analytic capabilities to peer into the performance, health and efficiency of the virtualised environment, and then use this data to proactively manage performance and capacity.

“Utilising the vSphere health model, vSphere with Operations Management extrapolates and presents data for managing performance and capacity more effectively than any other current or promised solutions,” said Ben Scheerer of VMware’s Cloud and Infrastructure Management product group.

VMware vSphere with Operations Management is set to be available later this quarter in Standard, Enterprise and Enterprise Plus editions, priced from $1,745 per processer with no core, vRAM or virtual machine limits.

VMware also announced VMware vSphere Data Protection Advanced, a backup and recovery tool for business critical applications such as Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft SQL Server running in virtual environments.

Based on EMC’s Avamar, vSphere Data Protection Advanced will ship this quarter for $1,095 per processor, with no restrictions on the number of protected virtual machines.