Today the number of virtual machines (VMs) being introduced into the enterprise IT environment is proliferating and SMBs are beginning to evaluate how they too can benefit from bringing VMs into their environments.  For SMBs the benefits can include: more agile and high available environments, lower total cost of ownership, and reduced downtime of critical servers.

However, as the level of virtualization adoption continues to increase at a very rapid pace there is a rising concern about the ever increasing number of “unidentified risks” that accompany this growth. Companies large and small are moving to implement some form of virtualization, but because of the ease of which these virtual systems can be created, there are also some inherent challenges.

Because a VM can be spun up – in many cases “undetected” – this presents some very real concerns for IT Managers.  Without the proper tools to identify the addition of any new VM on the network, most IT organizations are operating in a handicapped state. IT must consider the following when bringing VMs onto the network:

1. With the absence of any form of “virtual machine discovery” tool, how would IT even begin to know how many VMs are currently running in their environment?

2.  One of the greatest concerns with VMs that get spun up is that they are created with an “old image” which may not be updated with the latest patches, thus introducing unnecessary risk.

To counter these concerns, there are tools available today to help address the “unidentified risks.”  If the concerns I’ve outlined above sound familiar…there is hope! Check out http://www.shavlik.com/sol-virtualization.aspx for more information on the challenges I listed above.

Dave Eike
Shavlik Technologies