How to Tame Virtualization Sprawl

Monitor, Manage, Report

Implement a system management platform that can integrate with your chosen virtualization platform(s).

Virtual systems share physical resources that were never shared in the one  physical server/one application model. From the beginning of a virtualization project, it’s important to understand how to correlate physical system performance with the hosted machines running on the physical resource.

Monitor the tempo of VM creation to see if auditing intervals are frequent enough. It may be prudent to increase compliance audit frequency in response to rapid VM deployment.

Requests for capacity planning forecasts are an inevitable outgrowth of successful virtualization projects. In organizations where virtualization evolves from “great to have” to “standard operating procedure,” IT managers will have to accurately measure the amount of physical resources needed to host the expected increase in virtual infrastructure requirements. Only management systems that track utilization over time will be able to provide reasonable metrics for sizing future IT hardware requirements.

Maturing virtualization infrastructures that have been in place for two or three years will increasingly be measured against a performance yardstick that disallows infrastructure management mistakes. Today, there is still a halo glow around wringing huge productivity gains from existing hardware. Tomorrow, it will be expected, and downtime caused by uncontrolled virtual infrastructure sprawl will be a mark against IT.