Virtualisation grows, but management challenges prevail

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Although virtualisation adoption is increasing, a new study finds inefficient data centre management continues to burden IT managers.

The study by Lighthouse Research, which surveyed 411 enterprise data centre decision makers, found that 45 per cent of respondents have implemented virtualisation technology.

But 61 per cent of participants said they either manually track or do not track server resource consumption, while 79 per cent of respondents report they either manually manage or do not manage the reallocation of server workloads based on available resources.

This exposed a lack of expertise, difficulty managing virtual servers and having a single point of failure as major challenges, said survey sponsor Novell. In response, the vendor pointed to the trend identified in the survey towards more automated management to mitigate the effect of these challenges on data efficiency.

Nearly two-thirds (72 per cent) of respondents said they planned to implement automated software patching and updates in the next two years. And 75 per cent also intend to increase the efficiency of their data centre by using automated server monitoring, which is essential to combat management complications exacerbated by virtualisation technology.

"Effectively managing a data centre has been a challenge for some time, however, the challenge increases with the use of physical and virtual machines in heterogeneous environments," said Drue Reeves, vice president and research director for research firm, the Burton Group.

"Server virtualisation introduces a whole new world of resource mobility and growth. Data centre management software must scale to reduce the complexity associated with virtualisation-induced server sprawl and enable the automated, dynamic data centre."

The survey also found enterprises were looking for key features in a data centre management tool, including secured management capabilities (89 per cent); remote access and management (86 per cent); compatibility with multiple operating systems and platforms (85 per cent); automated monitoring and reporting (81 per cent); and policy-based automated software using preset thresholds (72 per cent).

And not be forgotten, environmental concerns scored high on respondents' list of priorities, with space and power also being factors in the decision to buy data centre management tools, at 67 per cent and 65 per cent respectively.

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