What do Virtualization and Cloud executives think about 2010? Find out in this VMblog.com series exclusive.
Article Contributed by David M. Lynch, VP of marketing for Embotics
2010: The year of virtualization management, not just adoption
We saw an increase across the board in the overall level of virtualization adoption in the datacenter in 2009, and all indications are that this will continue in 2010, and probably even accelerate as the economy starts to recover.
But growth comes with its own set of "growing pains." As virtual environments get larger, they get more and more difficult to manage - especially if multiple VirtualCenters or vCenters are used. Some of the more typical symptoms that our customers see include virtual sprawl becoming a bigger and bigger problem, administration workloads increasing and costs starting to escalate.
Interestingly, we recently concluded a study among our customer base regarding the causes of sprawl and found that these symptoms can all be traced back to a common cause: the lack of managerial insight and administrative automation in the management systems provided by the virtualization vendors. (A copy of this study, "Understanding Virtual Sprawl," can be downloaded free at: http://www.embotics.com/knowledge-center/white-papers).
Without the addition of automation, combined with effective insight and reporting, organizations have to continually add resources as they grow - which defeats the whole value proposition for virtualization. The alternative (which a lot of organizations have to take), is to slow the adoption down to match available resources. This is not a viable long-term picture. And of course, as more and more virtualization moves from the lab into production, controls and audit become more important.
These issues will have to be addressed for organizations to scale their environments effectively, and so we expect to see the emphasis in virtualization management move from the tactical insight and waste management (i.e., sprawl management), to the more strategic efforts of improving operational efficiency and effectiveness. This will be good for us, as this is the primary focus of Embotics V-CommanderTM.
The increased datacenter production use of virtualization will also have an impact on management tools. Once a datacenter is more than about 25 percent virtualized, virtualization management becomes essential - but not just for itself. We expect to see more internal emphasis on "management convergence," i.e., management across multiple virtualization platforms as well as across the physical and virtual data center management. This means ITIL will move over to the virtual world, with integration and cross platform management becoming key.
So overall, we expect to see more focus on optimization, automation, scalability and simplicity. As virtualization penetration increased in the datacenter in 2009, headcounts did not. Consequently, virtualization administration teams simply do not have the time for complexity. At the same time, they are realizing that point tools will not scale to where they need them, and consequently we will see a shift towards a more systemic and scalable approach to management, with the focus on ease of deployment and fast time to value. Again, this is a perfect fit for Embotics V-CommanderTM.
Without a doubt, 2010 will continue to bring rapid virtualization adoption, but with it, more focus on making virtualization a true datacenter architecture, and that means making it operationally efficient, effective and integrated. It's going to be an interesting year!
About the Author
David M. Lynch, VP of marketing, Embotics: A dynamic, successful and well rounded 30 year veteran of the high tech marketplace with international expertise, David has spent the past 11 years in the high tech industry, working, writing commenting on technologies and trends and their impact on the industry. Subjects have included authentication, access control, public key infrastructure (PKI), deperimeterization, compliance and virtualization. Prior to Embotics Corporation, David previously held VP Worldwide Marketing roles at Apani Networks, Array Networks, Rainbow Technologies and Kyberpass Corp, and was President of Cablecom International. A long time member of Mensa, Mr. Lynch holds degrees in Nautical Science (City of London), Computer Technology (Montreal) and an MBA from the University of Toronto.