HP recently announced availability of a driver for their long-fielded HP Network Automation product which delivers integrated support of virtual switches (vSwitches) – virtual network elements that exist within VMWare’s ESX virtual server platform. This introduction marks the first third-party extension of network change and configuration management technology to incorporate support for and address the specific needs of operations teams that are trying to fully embrace, operationalize, and standardize virtual server architectures into mainstream production, and apply the same best practices for reliable, low-risk, secure networking that is standard operating procedure in the non-virtual production network.