Virtualization Mgt. Tools Needed

LAS VEGAS and NEW YORK -- EMC Corporation today unveiled the results of an exclusive survey focused on IT management in virtualized environments. The analysis, conducted by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), reveals that many companies today feel unprepared to face the challenges associated with managing IT environments that include both physical and virtual elements.

The survey, completed in September 2008, polled more than 150 IT business professionals and uncovers that while virtualization technology brings higher levels of speed and efficiency to businesses today, only 24% of respondents feel "very confident" their current management tools are sufficient to maintain existing IT service levels. Among those using specialized management tools for VMware environments, however, respondents were more than twice as likely to be "very confident" they could maintain IT service levels.

Additionally, nearly 48% report their number one challenge in tier-one production environments is isolating root cause problems within server virtualized environments. A key management challenge cited for VMware environments: the ability to map virtual machines to physical infrastructures, such as servers and applications, storage management, virtual security, and application performance monitoring.

Taking this one step further, the study relates that nearly 60% of respondents plan to deploy storage virtualization technologies in conjunction with VMware over the next 12 months. Chief among these storage technologies is block-based virtualization and thin provisioning (38%), followed by virtual SANs and file storage virtualization.

"As virtualization technologies continue to be deployed in larger and more complex production environments, greater emphasis will be placed on the day-to-day management needs of these environments," stated Bob Laliberte, Analyst for Enterprise Strategy Group. "Specifically the requirement for operations teams to have complete visibility of the virtual infrastructure and how that maps to the physical infrastructure will be critical. EMC continues to advance on its first mover advantage in this space by delivering new functionality for users to manage their physical and virtual infrastructures."

EMC Corp.