Firms face virtual server sprawl

Creating a virtual machine is now so simple that firms face virtual server sprawl, according to virtualisation firm Vizioncore.

While virtual server sprawl doesn't take up as much room as physical server sprawl, it can still cause difficulties for firms, taking up too much space and causing management issues.

"We're starting to see that more and more in enterprise companies," said Colin Wright, Vizioncore's regional director for North Europe. He said one firm had 1,100 virtual servers in use. "That's a whole new data centre," he said. "No one wants to go from having 50 physical servers to 2,000 virtual servers, with 800 not being used."

The problem isn't the technology, but reflects the different way virtualised servers must be managed compared to their physical counterparts.

"We see it as more of a policy management aspect," said Wright. "It's easy to provision a machine, but need you policy to decommission...they're being created for a reason, but there's no reason or metric to get rid of it after."

Quocirca analyst Dennis Szubert agreed with Wright's sprawl assessment. "The problem is that virtualised servers are so easy that unless they have tight management, you get even more sprawl than with physical servers," said Dennis Szubert. "If you're spawning servers off without them being utilised... it's just a management problem, but it's easy to become swamped."

Indeed, virtual machines are easy to create, Wright said, but getting rid of them afterwards often involves management intervention. "Getting rid of any server needs a lot of sign-off. You can technically remove one as easy as it is to create it, but it's the approval process that's the problem."

As well, if virtual servers aren't properly managed, it becomes increasingly difficult for IT departments to know which are important and which are not. "If you don't know how often or intensively a server is being used, you can't put in place a suitable backup or recovery strategy for that virtual machine," Wright said. "You can end up in the situation where a virtual machine over time becomes quite critical but because no policy exists around creating and monitoring virtual machines, there is no backup strategy in place for it."

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