Virtualization vs. Security - Information Security Magazine

Another nice grain of salt to keep in mind re: TCO of virtualization:

Seven Winners, One Mission - Information Security Magazine: "...People are looking for less footprint and more computing power. On the business side, CIOs are looking at cost savings, then think about security. One side of the market is centralizing with thin, dumb clients, and using hosted software as a service and Ajax applications, dispersing processing power to the edge. The two intersections are never secured. Virtualization is fantastic: it does great things for cost, horrible things for security. But I think we're making progress on this portion of the uphill slant. Look at the classes of problems we have; we haven't eliminated any, we're creating more. Ajax is an example, and we're at odds of how business and technology are approaching these problem sets. We've put all this power in users' hands and we yank it back because we never engineered proper security in the first place. it's not right..."

Vendors Tame Virtualization Management Complexity, eWeek 9/07

A fascinating focus on ITIL best practices (and also monitoring) for VMware virtualization. However, the overall ITIL challenge would seem to go way, way beyond just VMware issues [e. g. holistic infrastructure change management, as part of the overall scope of best practices that ought to be enabled via a framework such as HP OpenView, CA Unicenter, IBM Tivoli etc...]

Meanwhile, this planned 4th quarter release by Opalis may be worth watching for (the monitoring tool by eG Innovations is supposedly out already):

Vendors Tame Virtualization Management Complexity: "...automation vendor Opalis Sept. 4 announced its new Opalis Process Catalog for Virtualization, aimed in part at helping IT rein in virtual machine sprawl. 'It's so easy to provision a new virtual machine, they tend to multiply like bunny rabbits. As a result, storage utilization goes through the roof,' said Charles Crouchman, chief technology officer of the Toronto-based company.

The Opalis Process Catalog for Virtualization represents a new chapter in the company's overall electronic IT process catalog book for solving specific problems. It includes automation policies based on ITIL best practices for managing virtual environments. Functions range from straightforward automation of maintenance tasks such as patch management to 'high value processes such as virtual machine life cycle management,' Crouchman said.

The virtualization process catalog includes process flows for both provisioning a new virtual machine and de-provisioning it. 'We can watch the help desk system for a ticket requesting a new VM, sense the ticket has been opened, and we can check that it is in compliance with [rules such as] who can ask for a VM, what kind of VM [is acceptable] and which software you can use on a VM. If it passes compliance, we can immediately provision that VM,' he said.

The product is due in the fourth quarter, although Opalis officials will demonstrate it at VMworld in San Francisco.

Meanwhile, eG Innovations at VMworld will take the wraps off new performance monitoring software that can provide the inside view of how applications are performing within a virtual machine guest.

The Iselin, N.J., company will introduce its new eG Monitor for VMware Infrastructures, which shows in real time the internal and external performance views of what the VMware host sees about guests and what the guests see themselves...."