UK-based Zeus Technology has unwrapped a new version of its flagship traffic management technology that operates as a virtual appliance in virtualized data centers.

It's called, pointedly enough, the Zeus Extensible Traffic Manager Virtual Appliance (ZXTM VA) and runs on VMware's ESX Server 3 infrastructure. It manages incoming network traffic across a cluster of virtual machines, inspecting, routing, rewriting and manipulating each request.

If the VMs are moved around, as VMs are wont to be, it delivers incoming traffic to the most available machines.

The widgetry has been introduced through VMware's newfangled Virtual Appliance Marketplace, created so virtual appliances and customers find each other, hoping an ecosystem develops.

VMware says there are something like 300 virtual appliances available in the marketplace.

ZXTM VA is the only software-based Layer 7 traffic manager available as a virtual appliance.

It now works on Windows as well as Linux/Unix.