Check out the latest from SearchServerVirtualization as they speak with Andrew Hillier from CiRBA.

Migrating to virtualization and blade servers can decrease the number of physical servers IT staffers have to manage, but that doesn't necessarily put the managers on easy street.

"A virtualized environment has more managed entities -- all the same OSes (operating systems) as the original plus the VM hosts," said CiRBA CTO Andrew Hillier, co-founder and CTO of CiRBA, a data center intelligence software firm. This causes "an increase in the workload on administrators, not a decrease."

Changing your IT practices can help mitigate the increased management burden posed by VMs and blades, said Hillier in this interview. Failure to change can cause some big problems. SearchServerVirtualization.com caught up with Hillier before his participation in a panel discussion, "Blades and Virtualization - Transforming Enterprise Computing" at the Server Blade Summit in Anaheim, Calif.

SearchServerVirtualization.com: Do IT managers need to rethink their data center management policies and practices when moving to virtualization?

Andrew Hillier: Virtualization can theoretically be done in such a way as to minimize the impact on existing data center management processes, but doing so often fails to take advantage of the true potential of the P2V (physical-to- virtual) paradigm shift.

For example, by treating VMs the same way you would physical systems, it is possible to provision and deploy them in a manner that largely resembles that of physical gear, once you get past the bare- metal steps. But this sells the technology short; it can be taken so much further. Many progressive environments are looking at the technology to completely revamp the dev/test cycle, code promotion, performance test and disaster recovery processes, making them more nimble and automated. By embracing the paradigm and using new-school thinking around data center management, there are much greater benefits that can be had.