First Look : BlueBear’s Kodiak Virtual Machine Manager

I was recently sent a private Beta code for the new BlueBear Kodiak Manager.  Kodiak is an all in one Virtual Machine manager that currently supports VMware with plans to support XenServer and HyperV in the future.

The interface is very nice but I had a terrible time trying to get the certificate warnings to stop coming up.  I am running Vista for my client and did not test on a standard XP machine.  Your mileage may vary.

After launching the application, you are presented with the standard 1)Server Address 2)Username and 3) Password combos.

This kicks off some status message on the bottom of the screen while Kodiak gathers the appropriate data from your environment.

This early version does not provide much in terms of feedback so occasionally, the manager looked as though it froze and I had to kill the process to get back.

The times it did respond, I was bombarded with Certificate Warnings.
 
Each time it fetched different data, this warning came up and it became unBEARable (pardon the pun).  I am sure there is a way around this (I tried to import the certificates without luck).  It would be nice for the application to handle the certificate management on it’s own.

Once in, you get a nice graphical map of your resources within the environment.  It’s an interesting way to view everything but I am not sure how it would look with 100s of VMs.  In any event, it is a nice way to view all of your resources without the use of VirtualCenter.  Kodiak allows you to add multiple hosts into the same view.  Each VM has dynamic arcs around them representing Memory and CPU usage.

All in all, this was a very good first beta and I am excited to see a more stable version of the product in the future.

I have 3 Beta invitations available to me if anyone wants them.  Just drop me a comment below if you want me to send you one.

UPDATE: 1/16/2009

I am all out of Invites but check here for more.