As virtualization capabilities are built into networking, storage,applications
and databases giving shape to the software defined datacenter, problems with
management and visibility across data centerboundaries will emerge. A recent
survey by SolarWinds, aleading provider of powerful
and affordable IT management software,revealed that more than 700 IT
professionals in six countries acrossthe globe agreed virtualization technology
contributes significantlyto management challenges, indicating the impact is
undeniable and vast.
With the software defined data center transition an imminent
reality,the following five management challenges should be on every IT
pro'sradar in preparation:
1. Virtual Mobility Impacts Network Optimization -
Virtualization has typically operated within a contained portion of the network
such that changes in the virtualization environment didn't usually impact the
broader network. With improvements and increased adoption of workload mobility
technologies like Metro vMotion and storage vMotion that make it easier to move
workloads geographically, the rapidmovement of workloads could cause new
problems for the overall enterprise network.
2. Storage Tries to Keep Up with
Virtual Mobility & Software-Defined Networks - Just like virtual mobility
can impact networks, if both compute and networks become more software-defined and
flexible then storage can get left behind.Advanced planning and technology
investments will be required for storage to make sure that the storage systems
can handle the mobility enabled by server virtualization and software-defined
networking.
3. The Virtual I/O Blender Becomes Mission Critical - Storage
I/O hasbeen a limiting factor for virtualizing many I/O intensiveapplications
like databases. With technologies like solid state disk(SSD) opening the door to
many of these mission criticalapplications, failures in performance and capacity
management willhave an even greater impact on the business and end users.
Further,IOPS demand created by desktop virtualization can be
significantlydifferent than server virtualization, requiring more low-latency,
andusually more expensive hardware.
4. Application Control Meets Real-time
Automation - Most failures are caused by something changing. As a result,
applications teams have traditionally put very tight controls on changes to
mission critical application systems.Virtualization and automation on the other
hand, make it very fast and easy to create new systems or make changes to
existing systems or even entire clusters of systems and application stacks. These
two cultures will have to find ways to leverage the power and flexibility of
virtualization without introducing instability into critical virtualized
applications.
5. Virtualization Reaches Across Silos - Network, storage,
applications, and compute all come together at the virtualization layer. While
server virtualization is by far the mostmature component of a software defined
data center, the nextchallenge will be to look outside the compute boundaries to
figureout how to best manage and coordinate changes/actions with other technology
areas. As the pace of change increases across all the interrelated technology,
the IT professionals managing the virtualization layer will increasingly have to
be the coordinating "glue" to keep other teams aligned.
SolarWinds Solutions to Help Manage the Software Defined Data
Center
Virtualization and software defined resource management has
created a management gap across the data center. As management gets more complex,
it will no longer be feasible to manage applications,virtual servers, physical
servers, storage and networking as separate, independent silos. SolarWinds
delivers powerful and easy-to-use comprehensive virtualization management as well
as integrated views into the application, storage and network environments needed
to manage the complexity of today's evolving datacenter. IT pros can deploy
SolarWinds solutions, including:
- SolarWinds Virtualization
Manager - comprehensive virtualization management
- SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor -
agentless application and server
monitoring
- SolarWinds Storage Manager -
multi-vendor storage performance and capacity management
- SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor - network
monitoring and management