Virtualization Planning: Systems Management Keys to Success

The explosive growth of today's virtualization management market is good news for organizations looking to manage and optimize their virtual environments. Like every technology that has come before it, the route to success with virtualization lies in solid, standardized processes and management software to automate and govern the execution of these processes. Process discipline and streamlined management automation have long been operational mandates, but the advent of virtualization on industry-standard servers exacerbates these requirements.

Luckily, the growing demand for automated virtualization management tools has produced an array of software solutions. Many options exist -- too many, in fact -- and you must evaluate these options to minimize the risk of additional complexity and vendor dissolution. Buyers need to be careful in such a young market segment and remain pragmatic about the requirements and the role these technologies will play in the overall management portfolio. The real risk is the creation of yet another silo that will have to be absorbed later on. To avoid future headaches, organizations should include virtualization as just another technology domain in the consolidated management portfolio.

As businesses begin to evaluate tools to help manage their virtual environment, Forrester recommends focusing on four key system management capabilities; configuration management, capacity planning and VM placement, performance monitoring, and real-time automation. Keep in mind that each earlier step is a prerequisite of the next, making the priority of the list important. For example, attempting real-time automation without first conquering the challenges of capacity management will prove frustrating and ultimately futile.

The explosive growth of today's virtualization management market is good news for organizations looking to manage and optimize their virtual environments. Like every technology that has come before it, the route to success with virtualization lies in solid, standardized processes and management software to automate and govern the execution of these processes. Process discipline and streamlined management automation have long been operational mandates, but the advent of virtualization on industry-standard servers exacerbates these requirements.

Luckily, the growing demand for automated virtualization management tools has produced an array of software solutions. Many options exist -- too many, in fact -- and you must evaluate these options to minimize the risk of additional complexity and vendor dissolution. Buyers need to be careful in such a young market segment and remain pragmatic about the requirements and the role these technologies will play in the overall management portfolio. The real risk is the creation of yet another silo that will have to be absorbed later on. To avoid future headaches, organizations should include virtualization as just another technology domain in the consolidated management portfolio.

As businesses begin to evaluate tools to help manage their virtual environment, Forrester recommends focusing on four key system management capabilities; configuration management, capacity planning and VM placement, performance monitoring, and real-time automation. Keep in mind that each earlier step is a prerequisite of the next, making the priority of the list important. For example, attempting real-time automation without first conquering the challenges of capacity management will prove frustrating and ultimately futile.

1. Improve configuration management

It's important to start with improving configuration management because it is necessary to orchestrate the relationship among large numbers of dynamically changing VMs, physical servers, storage, and network resources. These tools are often referred to as "provisioning tools," which refers to a higher state of configuration change management.

2. Maximize capacity planning and VM placement

As your virtualized pool grows in size, you will need tools that analyze capacity trends and optimize where your VMs run to minimize hardware footprint. These tools will be able to alert operations and engineering when resources are running low to guard against overprovisioning. You want to maximize capacity utilization to squeeze the most value from your server investments, but doing so without sufficient visibility is dangerous.

3. Performance Monitoring

Performance measurement will rise in importance as you increase the number of VMs per physical host and drive up overall utilization. We find this to be a particularly critical tool as you approach 20 or 30 VMs per physical server. To prevent problems from affecting user experience with multiple apps, your administrators need VM-aware performance monitoring tools that can help pinpoint issues.