VM sprawl and VM stall can slow enterprise IT organizations' plans to adopt cloud computing, but gaining visibility and control and adding automation technologies could help IT overcome hurdles
Virtualization is an obvious stepping stone to private cloud computing environments, but many IT organizations could encounter obstacles preventing them from evolving their virtual server deployment into a cloud implementation.
In the past, industry watchers warned of virtual machine, or VM, sprawl in which too many virtual instances were deployed without IT management consent or control. VM sprawl could cause IT staff many problems including loss of licenses, unrealized resources, capacity shortages and overworked administrators, trying to keep up with the multiplying VMs. Now the issue has evolved into VM stall, in which many IT organizations are unable to grow their virtual deployments beyond some 30% of servers or the servers that handle the low-hanging fruit in the environment. VM stall can be blamed in part on VM sprawl, as strange as it may seem, according to Andi Mann, vice president of product marketing for the Virtualization and Automation customer solutions unit at CA Technologies (and a former industry analyst at Enterprise Management Associates).
“It’s ironic that VM sprawl can lead directly to VM stall, but it is one of the reasons virtual deployments simply stop progressing,” Mann says. “VM stall happens when IT departments run out of capacity because of poorly managed and controlled VM sprawl or they run out of licenses and the people to manage the environment. Essentially, IT departments run out of options because they can’t deploy more virtual machines.”
Mann and Stephen Elliot, vice president for CA Technologies’ Infrastructure Management and Data Center Automation customer solutions unit, will be presenting a session at VMworld 2010 in San Francisco. Mann and Elliot will present Wednesday, Sept. 1 at 10:30 am at VMworld during session SP8373. The two plan to provide attendees with practical, actionable approaches to getting over the hump of VM sprawl and/or VM stall and to begin evolving their virtual environments into a private cloud, which seems fitting with the show theme boasting, “Virtual Roads. Actual Clouds.”
“We will explain how to get over VM stall with visibility, control and automation,” Mann says.
He explains that the visibility portion is being able to see what is deployed and where, what’s in use and what’s not as well as what performance the environment is experiencing. “Visibility also enables you to understand what you need to change to align with business policies,” Mann says. “Core visibility is the absolute starting point.”
Next comes control. If you can’t manage what you can’t see, having visibility naturally leads to better control. With controls, IT managers can deprovision unused resources, set security and audit policies, and manage assets such as licenses and servers. Then by adding automation, IT managers can begin to embed the controls into the system, Mann says.
“If you can start to embed the knowledge into the systems, then you can free up staff from mundane provisioning and configuration tasks to higher-level architecture projects, for instance,” Mann says. “And if you can get over the hump of VM stall you can begin to evolve to cloud.”
Also at VMworld 2010, CA Technologies will be offering several chances for attendees to win an iPad and one opportunity to leave the show with a Smart Car. According to the vendor, attendees will visit the CA Technologies booth, view a demo, receive an enter to win a car application, complete the enter to win a car application, receive a T-shirt and then drop the application in a raffle box.
One winner will be drawn each hour on the hour for an iPad, and attendees must be present and wearing the CA Technologies T-shirt to win. All of the cards will be combined within the raffle box for one grand prize winner on the last day of the show. Again the attendees must be present and wearing a CA Technologies T-shirt to win, but the grand prize winner will receive the Smart Car that will be featured within the booth during the show.
Are you attending VMworld? What do you hope to learn from the conference? Is cloud the next step in your virtualization deployment plans? Please leave a comment here or let me know directly via e-mail at Denise.Dubie@ca.com.
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