Disconnect on VM management 18 November, 2007 By Paul Weinberg

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IT asset management and inventory continue to be a major issue among IT departments, with 82 percent of the administrators ranking it as 'important' or 'very important', but only a surprising one in three actually have existing tools in place.

At the same time 75 per cent of respondents indicated that management of their virtualized environment was 'important' to 'very important' to their operations, and more than 80 percent stated that they had a solution in place now or would have one within the next year.

Finally, 59 per cent of respondents stated that both ITIL and CMDB standards for IT best practices are of moderate to no value to their operations. Almost half have no plans for an ITIL or CMDB implementation in the near future.

David Link, chief executive officer and founder of ScienceLogic, stated a disconnect exists between the drive to adopt virtualization in some firms and the lack of sufficient management software tools for virtualized IT environments.

"One of the big issues for virtualization is that the market is still shaking out. It doesnt have a huge standards body behind it."

Even the market leader VMware with its suite of management tools in VMware Infrastructure 3 has not solved all of the technical challenges of virtualized environments, Link stated.

When problems do occur, systems administrators are often struggling to find out the source.

"Is it the SAN, network, cluster, server hardware, hypervisor or guest operating system? The challenge is you have to cut across a wide variety of technologies, well beyond the VMware tool set," he stated.

What surprises Link is that systems administrators are moving forward with virtualization without planning for management challenges and security risks.

"People have to think through their strategy is -- why you are virtualizing and for what application are you virtualizing?"

Link noted that virtualization vendors themselves have indicated that it will not be until 2009 when virtualization management tools "will be up to the task" of fully managing virtualized environments. "Gartner says that nobody has got it nailed by a long shot."

Meanwhile, what may be a headache for system administrators is a business opportunity for the channel.

The "fluid" nature of virtualization management has opened up consulting opportunities for resellers and systems integrators, he added.

Meanwhile Charles Smulders, managing vice president at Gartner and an expert on virtualization, stated that his organization has identified more than 50 companies with more than 100 virtualization management tool products

"The issue for IT managers is integrating these into existing management tools. There are lots of companies offering tools which provide part of a solution. [Virtualization management] is a very fragmented and embryonic market, which makes it difficult for buyers to make long term choices."