There were three main GUI components: the main NSM GUI called the Management Command Center from where we controlled the underlying management infrastructure; the main ASM GUI called the Systems Command Center from where we managed our VMs; and, the NSM Performance Scope GUI from where we peered into statistics collected about all managed servers.

Each uses a three-pane view (see ). There was a narrow tree-hierarchy on the left side of each to allow you to dig down into the VM environment.

We were able to do all the usual VM controlling commands, such as start, stop and shutdown; suspend, clone and make template from the Systems Command Center tool. But to be clear, CA's VM management and monitoring capabilities don't extend beyond what you can do within each VM environment, and those controls vary by hypervisor (such as HyperV commands are slightly different from the VirtualCenter commands).

The one task we were not able to do inside of CA's interface was create a new VM from scratch in either the VMware or Microsoft hypervisor environments. To create a new VM, we had to either clone another VM or use an existing template.

Cloning and migrating VMs are simple processes with CA's offering. For cloning, we clicked both the VM we wanted to clone and then the cloning option. A dropdown menu allowed us to add some details about the VM including name, storage location and host (even though we had to keep the same host, because choosing another one brought on failure of the process). You complete a similar process when migrating VMware VMs, except you need to choose the host to which the VM is to be moved.