VMware Inc.’s annual customer conference next week is expected to see the virtualization stalwart extend its tentacles deeper into the storage layer and the network, a theme that the ecosystem has been predictability quick to pick up on. Dell Inc. became the latest partner on the bandwagon this morning with the announcement of a preview for the upcoming major release of its enterprise monitoring platform that brings the different components of the data center together under a unified point of view.

The unveiling comes just days after the company launched version 7.2 of Foglight for Virtualization, which introduces compatibility with the vSwitch technology that’s used by VMware and its rivals for connecting virtual machines to physical networks. The forthcoming release builds on that support with a consolidated dashboard that Dell says provides a complete overview of enterprise infrastructure from the transport layer all the way to the storage and compute.

Foglight 8.0 places a particular emphasis on the latter. According to the hardware maker, it packs a universal forecasting tool that allows admins to plan out sever migrations regardless of which virtualization vendors are involved, if at all. That platform-agnostic approach represents a response to the increasingly successful efforts of Microsoft Corp. and Red Hat Inc. to undermine VMware’s dominance, a trend that is also reflected in the change management capabilities included in the new release.

Version 8.0 automatically stores key information about modifications (so long as they’re made through a major hypervisor) in a central repository that serves as an audit log organizations can utilize to identify the source of individual changes. It also doubles as a data backend for a built-in analytical engine Dell built to help practitioners carry out any performance optimizations that might be necessary before an update rolls out rather than after the fact.

To further reduce the risk of unattended bottlenecks, the release packs an entire set of new visualization capabilities that the company claims offer comprehensive visibility of what’s happening in an environment at any given time, including movement among virtual clusters and physical servers. The functionality is complemented by “intelligent profile engines” that map out future workload growth in order to make it easier for organizations to keep up with their evolving hardware requirements.

And just in case an inefficiency does somehow slip into production, the platform provides a rollback option that makes it possible to quickly reverse unwanted changes before too much damage can occur.

The release, which is set to hit general availability next quarter, extends the value proposition of Foglight beyond merely providing users with a better understanding of their environments to helping them act on that insight. That’s a big leap that underscores Dell’s aggressive efforts to offset the accelerating commoditization of hardware eating away at its already low margins.

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