Recently at VMworld Europe 2009 in February, VMware announced a new vSphere offering called VMware vShield Zones that provides network monitoring and firewalling for security and compliance of VM's. vShield Zones is based on our acquistion of Blue Lane Technologies last October. It is uses Blue Lane's mature application-aware network stack, but instead of offering virtual patching, it has all-new modules providing network flowing monitoring/auditing as well as network firewalling. These are packaged as a virtual appliance and provides visibility and enforcement specifically for logically partitioning the interior of the virtual datacenter.

We recent started a private beta open to vSphere beta customers that will be running for the next few weeks. If you are interested, please send me a private message. You can learn more about VMware vShield Zones at the product page here: http://www.vmware.com/products/vshield-zones/