Raritan provides a compelling discussion in this whitepaper entitled, Virtualization and Data Center Management: Managing the complexities of virtualization. The premise is in understanding the benefits behind having a single audited solution for all servers whether physical or virtual.
The author notes three major reasons for virtualization; simplified disaster recovery efforts, easier deployment and provisioning, and reduced power consumption and cooling needs. The flip side is that virtualization brings another level of administration to the data center, issues with proliferation of access methods, and managing a substantial number of authorization and audit sources.
As noted a single solution is instrumental in reducing complexity. Considerations in such a solution are:
- Ease in understanding and navigation
- Simple visualization of a virtualized topology
- Simplifying the configuration of new virtual machines and hypervisors into the consolidated tool
- Configuring new virtual machines and hypervisors in bulk
- Ease in combining virtualization access tools with physical, out-of-band tools
Software licensing and dynamic expansion
This paper offers detail in each one of these areas. It also makes an important case for post deployment technology that will enhance the reasoning and benefits of virtualization.