This article is full of innacuracies. Why do you assert that managing virtualized servers is a lot harder than physical ones? That's absurd! What is the difference between delivering OS and app patches to a virtualized OS? None! Why can't you use group policy, SMS, or Tivolli to deploy software, patches, and configuration settings to virtualized machines the same way you do to physical ones? You imply that there's a difference, what is it?

You assert that methods to manage 10 physical boxes won't scale when each is running a bunch of virtualized machines. That's so wrong on two counts: first, according to analysists, virtualization is primarily being used to consolidate multiple physical machines onto a single one. Second, what difference does it make to group policy or whatever your automated configuration management solution is whether its 10 machines or 100?

Its only in the second half of the article that you get into some genuine challenges unique to virtualization: tracking movement of VMs between hosts, tracking resource utilization, and capacity planning. But these are challenges related to managing the virtualization technology, not the virtual machines. Managing a virtualized host is the same as a physical one, I don't understand why so many pundits are unable to accept this simple truth.