Despite widespread virtualization adoption many organizations fail to realize cost and resource savings touted by the technology's proponents, according to a study released today by Network Instruments. The onsite survey of 120 network engineers and IT managers and executives attending Interop found:

• Extensive Virtualization Deployment: 55 percent have virtualized mission-critical servers, including e-mail and Web servers. Another 50 percent run other servers such as their DNS and DHCP servers in virtual environments. Thirty-nine percent extended virtualization to the desktop.
• Troubleshooting in the Dark: 27 percent identified a lack of visibility and tools as the largest troubleshooting challenge in virtual environments. Other troubleshooting concerns include a lack of training on virtual infrastructure (26 percent) followed by an inability to secure infrastructure (21 percent).
• Virtualization Pitfalls: 55 percent report experiencing more problems than benefits with virtualization, while 45 realized the technology's benefits.
• Chief Virtualization Problems: 59 percent lack experience to appropriately manage the technology, while 47 percent report roll-out costs were too high.

"Many of the people we're speaking with have implemented virtualization, but often lack of visibility is keeping them from realizing the benefits of the technology," said Charles Thompson, product manager of Network Instruments. "Not surprisingly, a high number of companies have deployed critical network services on virtual machines. The number of organizations without appropriate monitoring tools, however, definitely caught my attention. Without proper tools, application performance can unnecessarily degrade and network teams waste hours troubleshooting."