VKernel just released a free tool called VKernel AppVIEW, an "extremely powerful tool to monitor, diagnose, and resolve capacity bottlenecks in application virtual machines." What's misleading about the name of this tool is that it doesn't actually profile applications. Instead, it profiles virtual machines using basic metrics.

The challenge with profiling applications is that the data collector must look at workloads running inside virtual machines. And since this is something VKernel cannot do (yet), it decided to incorrectly use the term "application virtual machines", which refers to a virtual machine hosting an application, not an entire operating system workload as is the case with hardware virtualization.

The big question is why would someone want to get performance metrics on 5 of their VMs (AppVIEW limit) when they can get performance metrics on all VMs using tools provided by virtualization vendors?!

In contrast, what VKernel claims it can do, is exactly what Lanamark does today - provides a unified view of applications, users, workloads and the underlying IT (both physical and virtual) infrastructure.