Virtualisation: Realising the benefits
T departments are being pressured to cut costs, and yet deliver
more services faster and better than before. Some businesses have
turned to
virtualisation to meet these challenges. However, even those
that have not will find that virtualisation is seeping into their
IT systems. By their very nature, virtual machines are simple to
deploy - unlike physical server boxes, they can be implemented
without anyone noticing. As a result, IT managers often either
don't realise the full extent of proliferation throughout the data
centre or haven't the time to deal with it. Whichever is the case,
a strategic decision has not been made. Prior to virtualisation
taking off, server mis-management had the potential to destroy an
organisation's capability without the correct strategies in place,
virtualised environments will go the same way.
While many businesses acknowledge virtualisation's important
role, few actually have a strategy covering all the operational and
technical aspects. Without a strategy in place, a loss of control
is inevitable, leading to increased operational complexity, risks
to services and increased costs. Businesses must, therefore,
consider the key challenges of managing virtualised environments
and carefully weigh up the impact virtualisation will have.
Firstly, server utilisation must be carefully managed. As more
environments are placed onto single machines, the servers
themselves will be pushed harder, with less room for error. To
maintain performance and avoid downtime, servers will require
careful and constant management to detect potential problems.
It is not enough to simply rely on current management processes
to police the new environments. Traditional change and
configuration management processes such as
Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) are not
designed for virtualised environments where services can be moved
as required, so need further adaptation. Businesses will also need
to consider how they back-up and restore virtual machines.
Securing these multiple environments on the same physical server
will also be a significant challenge that needs to be considered.
Virtualisation has developed so quickly that security tools and
processes have not yet caught up, meaning that security must be
carefully scrutinised at all times.
Similarly, there are currently no established virtualisation
standards, making unified environments impossible. While some
organisations have overcome this by using single vendors, this
leaves them locked into one approach and vulnerable to the
predicted consolidation of the virtualisation market.
Lastly, while some vendors are adapting their management tool
products to handle virtualisation, often they do not cover all
possible management aspects. As a result, they only grant piecemeal
control of the environment.
In order to overcome these challenges and reap the full benefits
of virtualisation, businesses will need to evolve their approach to
data centre management. Taking a standardised approach to
virtualisation deployment will be key to simplifying management of
the virtualised environment. Businesses can accomplish this by
applying the same guidelines and practices for physical server
deployments to their virtual machines. This will provide ground
rules for how virtual machines enter the environment and allows
them to be placed inside an operational framework.
To do this effectively, they must carefully consider
virtualisation's impact in three key areas. First, technology -
organisations must examine how the added features, functionality
and advantages of virtualisation integrate into their existing
systems, over and above simply running multiple environments on
fewer servers. Second, its operational impact - how does the
virtualisation already in place impact existing systems, tools and
processes and what monitoring and management tool are needed?
Lastly, the financial impact - the ROI and running costs of any new
technology must be thoroughly investigated by the IT
department.
Clearly, virtualisation has many benefits for businesses.
However, to make it a success, organisations must have a strategy
in place to govern how virtualisation enters, is used in and leaves
the data centre. The very nature of virtualisation means that in
order to be effective, this will also require the business to
rethink how it approaches IT resource management. Only by having a
clear strategy and framework in place can organisations reap the
full benefits of virtualisation and use it to deliver IT services
more efficiently.
Chris Reid is managing consultant at
Morse