{"id":266,"date":"2007-12-19T10:34:02","date_gmt":"2007-12-19T15:34:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/?p=266"},"modified":"2007-12-19T10:34:02","modified_gmt":"2007-12-19T15:34:02","slug":"information-week-article-addressing-the-challenge-of-vm-sprawl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/index.php\/2007\/12\/information-week-article-addressing-the-challenge-of-vm-sprawl\/","title":{"rendered":"Information Week Article: Addressing the Challenge of VM Sprawl"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was recently interviewed by Charles Babcock from Information Week for his article, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.informationweek.com\/news\/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=205100164\" target=\"_blank\">Virtual Machine Sprawl Will Challenge IT Management Skills<\/a>.&#160; The interview was based on the content of a a White Paper I wrote for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.embotics.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Embotics, Inc.<\/a>, a provider of virtualization management solution.&#160; The paper is titled <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kusnetzky.net\/publications\/ImpactPapers\/20071023_VMS_you_have_to_see_em.pdf\">Controlling VM Sprawl: Best Practices for Maintaining Control of Virtualized Infrastructures<\/a>, and is available for free download (registration required).&#160; I&#8217;ll post more about the White Paper in an other blog entry.&#160; From the Information Week article:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Many IT managers don&#8217;t know how many virtual machines they&#8217;re running and whether they&#8217;re secure, says virtualization expert Anil Desai.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Software developers like to use <a href=\"http:\/\/www.informationweek.com\/#\">virtual machines<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.intellitxt.com\/ast\/adTypes\/3.gif\" \/><\/a> because they can cheaply mimic a target environment. <\/p>\n<p>Testers like virtual machines because they can test more combinations of new software with parts of the infrastructure in virtual machines. <\/p>\n<p>Department heads like virtual appliances &#8212; applications teamed up with an operating system in virtual machine-ready file format &#8212; because they can be downloaded off the Internet, tried out, and pressed into service immediately, without the usual delays. <\/p>\n<p>And each of these examples illustrates how virtualizing the enterprise leads to uncontrolled, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.informationweek.com\/#\">virtual machine<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.intellitxt.com\/ast\/adTypes\/3.gif\" \/><\/a> sprawl, with IT managers not knowing how many virtual machines they&#8217;re running, where they&#8217;re running, whether they&#8217;re offline and stored away, or whether they are secure. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>The article raises awareness of the problem of &quot;VM sprawl&quot; &#8211; the rapid proliferation of virtual machines, often with little or no IT oversight.&#160; The article and the White Paper provide some best practices for gaining (or regaining) control of virtual machines through policies and processes.&#160; Feel free to leave comments about your own VM management horror stories (and, better yet, solutions)!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was recently interviewed by Charles Babcock from Information Week for his article, Virtual Machine Sprawl Will Challenge IT Management Skills.&#160; The interview was based on the content of a a White Paper I wrote for Embotics, Inc., a provider of virtualization management solution.&#160; The paper is titled Controlling VM Sprawl: Best Practices for Maintaining [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-vm-management","category-policies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}