Not so long ago, if Underwriters Laboratories needed to add three additional servers worth of computing power in three weeks, the company just bought three new units, says Kent Walker, manager of computer operations for UL. With more time for capacity analysis - which is both labor and time-intensive - Walker might be able to shift resources around and stave off the purchase. But when the need is immediate, there's no time for that.
On the surface, security questions surrounding virtual servers don't seem much different than those for the physical machines on which they run. In fact, starting a virtual security audit by keeping in mind what you've already learned in the physical world is an excellent approach. Security analysts say the same practices, principles and basic common sense apply for a group of virtual servers as for any physical server farm. But, IT managers also need to factor in some additional considerations, due to the unique characteristics of the virtual world.
One of the technology industry's many dirty little secrets is the fact that computers spend a lot of their time doing almost nothing.
To understand why, consider a business process you only run every couple of weeks, like processing a payroll. Because it is so sensitive and simply has to happen on a few days of the month, businesses tend to acquire a large, powerful computer that can process a payroll without ever really being taxed to the point at which the process will be disrupted.
Evan Jafa, CIO of First American, says getting your virtualised servers set up and running right really is just the start of any IT leader's virtualisation work. And that if you don't think holistically about virtualisation, you're in for a rude surprise.
Australia and New Zealand Bank will decide whether to keep its branches running on conventional desktop PCs or switch to power-thrifty thin clients in the next few months.
"We are continuing to evaluate and pilot thin client and virtual desktop technology in a number of areas of the bank," a spokeswoman said.
Attracted by dazzling promises of dramatic reductions in the complexity and costs of infrastructures, some IT executives have made virtualisation one of the hottest topics in many years. It's being widely adopted because it delivers significant and almost immediate returns on investment for most user enterprises.
All too frequently, the general concept of virtualisation is equated with the specifics of server virtualisation. That is because the latter has been a fixture of the IT landscape for decades. Further, as IT vendors move to cash in on the growing popularity of virtualisation, they are touting a growing array of offerings to implement, facilitate, organise, mitigate, and/or manage various aspects of this technique. Not surprisingly, while each vendor's sales efforts are well-intentioned, the numerous approaches and a cacophony of terms can leave users overwhelmed or confused.
Speaking exclusively to CIO at its European CIO summit, Barbara Gordon EMEA VP for enterprise sales said that Microsoft sees price as a differentiator in the virtualisation market.
"What I hear is that users need to take out cost from their environments and virtualization is the credible approach. You have to ask if virtualisation today is delivering cost effective value? And that it justifies the costs that are being charged?" She added, "Price is a differentiator. Existing players are quite expensive. Microsoft can add value to this market with a server play and an application play."
Virtualisation could hardly be hotter as a trend, yet virtualisation management and security tools are still in their infancy. At first, it defies logic.
But CIOs on the front lines of virtualisation efforts know the reality of the problem: VMs can be deployed in minutes, which is a big advantage on the tactical side-and a big worry on the management side.
The right technology can encourage strong business growth and cut
costs. Here are the applications that are driving innovation:
Which technologies must any good IT executive examine in 2008? The list includes green power, unified communications, virtualization, mashups and social software.
Gartner has identified the “Top 10 Strategic Technologies for 2008”, and is urging IT executives to think about the risk of not implementing each one. If your competitor masters one of these technologies and you don't, will you be at a strategic disadvantage?
The data centre is shaping up as an environmental rogue as electricity prices rise, servers become hotter and denser, and climate change gels in the public consciousness.
Cutting the power used by data centres is one of the issues being dealt with by businesses in their efforts to make office buildings greener.
The trend towards minimising energy use by servers by the technique known as virtualisation has triggered new partnerships, some between long-term rivals.
One company experiencing a culture shock is Microsoft which has been forced to cosy up to some industry peers in order to consolidate its position in the new stakes, which involves switching work load between servers.
CIOs and IT leaders approaching their next PC technology refresh had better do some serious preparation. Technology refreshes—when enterprises replace one-third to one-quarter of their PC fleets each year on a rolling basis—have become pretty routine in recent years. But several factors are coming together right now to make refresh decisions more complicated and more fraught with risk, says Bruce Michelson, Hewlett-Packard’s national lifecycle manager. “This refresh is kind of a perfect storm,” says Michelson, who travels to HP’s Fortune 500 customers to study and share best practices regarding PC lifecycles.
Think of the factors affecting your next refresh as simultaneous storm fronts bearing names like Consumer IT and Virtualisation. (It almost goes without saying that Microsoft Vista upgrade plans, if you have them, will factor into this refresh cycle.)