IT management companies will have to really scramble to accomodate the curve balls that virtualization is bringing to their business. Networking, asset management, inventory, backup/recovery, etc. will all require an answer to the question: what is virtualized and what isn't? The answer to this question could potentially affect all of our previously obvious IT management formulas. Another important question will be "
where is it virtualized".
CEO John Swainson of Computer Associates (
from Earthweb):
Complexity spawned by virtualization and SOAs, as well as the uptick in computing usage associated with falling IT costs, is creating the need for stronger management schemas.
For example, IT management software estimations on power consumption can no longer be based solely on the number of machines now that some of those machines may be virtualized. However, power consupmtion data may still be very valuable from a virtual machine perspective for the purpose of identifying cost savings.
Managing the priority of virtual appliances will become an issue as multiple vendors produce appliances targeting a single piece of hardware on the machine.
In fact the key phrase is becoming "multiple vendors". It's one thing to have a single vendor produce software that provides I/O virtualization (for example) but how will we manage multiple vendors all providing I/O virtualization (see
Scalable I/O Virtualization via Self-Virtualizing Devices).
Managing the relationship of physical devices with various virtual machines will become increasingly complex. Machines will likely become a hybrid of physical and virtual parts.
Moreover, vendors will be implementing a wide array of solutions at the hypervisor, driver, OS and application layers. How will builders of IT management software coordinate virtualization across all of these boundaries?
Tags: [virtualization] [CA] [virtualization management] [SOA] [IT management]
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