Eight Top Challenges of Virtualization Management
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Resource Estimate Misfires
If you underestimate the amount of RAM you need upfront, you could shortchange the number of virtual machines you attempt to run on your host hardware. -
Unleashed Virtual Machines
Yes, you can create dozens, or hundreds, of virtual machines on a single host. But without capacity management, some could consume all resources while leaving none for the others. -
Sprawl
The creating of an army of virtual machines can also throw workflows off-balance, given the complexities they can bring to provisioning and operational tasks. -
Continuity
Unlike a PC environment, virtual machines can't be backed up to an actual hard drive. That's why 80% of IT pros say virtualization backup is a top tech challenge. -
Security
Six of 10 IT pros say data protection is a top tech challenge. As virtual machines proliferate, a lack of tech and business alignment on practices and procedures elevates risk. -
Backward Compatibility
This is especially challenging for enterprises which still depend upon a wealth of legacy systems. -
Performance Monitoring
Unlike physical servers, you can't monitor the performance of virtual servers with common hardware resources such as CPU, memory and storage. -
Licensing Restrictions
Because virtualization might change the way licensed app infrastructure software behaves, you could violate agreements with your vendor. That may expose your organization, liability-wise.
Virtualization now accounts for one-half of all server workloads—and it should reach more than 85 percent by 2016, according to Gartner. The benefits are many: Virtualization can reduce server incidents by 27 percent, system downtime by 26 percent and app-to-market time by 22 percent, according to research from VMware. It allows IT to better respond to customer and stakeholder requests, while reducing hardware and maintenance costs. Like any major tech initiative, however, the migration of existing tech to a virtualization environment presents many challenges. Virtualization projects can take on a wealth of new complexities which inspire many questions: What kind of resource investments will be required to support it? How do we deal with backup? Will our mission-critical apps be secure? To highlight the various, potential pitfalls, we're presenting the following eight top virtualization challenges. They are adapted from a number of online resources, including those posted by Ramco, an enterprise resource planning company; and ManageEngine, an IT management business. For more about Ramco's top challenges, click here. For more about ManageEngine's, click here.
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