VMware has announced the features of a new VMware Infrastructure release expected to be generally available later this year.

According to the release, the upcoming version of VMware Infrastructure, which will include the new VMware ESX Server 3.5 and VirtualCenter 2.5, will allow VMware customers to streamline the management of IT environments through greater levels of automation, increase overall infrastructure availability and boost performance for mission critical workloads. The new release will also include new offerings specifically targeted at midsize and smaller IT environments.

“This release builds upon nearly a decade of continuous innovation,” said Raghu Raghuram, vice president of products and solutions at VMware. “The new features, such as the first solution to move virtual machine disks across data stores, provide compelling value to customers of all sizes, whether they are small businesses or large enterprises.”

According to John Humphreys, program vice president at IDC, "With the announcement of VMware ESX Server 3.5 and VMware VirtualCenter 2.5, VMware is raising the bar by not only enhancing existing features but taking virtualisation to the next level with new capabilities for increased mobility and service availability. These new features can enable new use cases which in turn will help to drive new customer adoption of virtualisation within the industry.”

The new features in VMware Infrastructure meet the needs of a broad range of customers and IT environments – from midsize and small businesses to branch offices and corporate datacenters– and extend the value of all three layers of the virtualisation suite.