Defeating the Treachery that is VM Stall

Now they have given us--more like dumped on us--Virtual Machine Stall, which I think I want to cover with something else. Other than rhyming with virtual sprawl, virtual stall has got cynical me thinking, "These guys want it both ways." Sprawl, stall, which is it, Embotics?

Not that VP of Marketing David Lynch doesn't make a plausible case for VM stall. He talks about how virtualization snuck in the back door of datacenters without rigorous vetting because it offered an immediate, tactical fix to Servers Gone Wild. "Usually, data centers add new technology in a very controlled manner in which everyone is consulted, and they do a proof of concept and start a progressive rollout," he says. "Virtualization is the exception to that."

So virtualization, this interloper without portfolio, worms its way into a cross-silo presence, and just sort of sits there because it's not ready for prime time--it's not an architecture that lends itself to the vision of the dynamic data center. This problem, Lynch tells us, is pervasive across the industry.

But how does he know this is true? Because he posed a question to visitors at the Embotics website, asking them if they were slowing their adoption of virtualization because of management control issues. As it turned out, some 30 percent of respondents responded in the affirmative.

This comes as something of a surprise to me because during the course of my weekly briefings I have been asking this same question of other vendors and consultants, who have all agreed that server virtualization is cranking up more than ever as VMware and others push for much higher penetration rates in target accounts. I have heard stories of 100 percent saturation in many instances.

When I inform Lynch of my own informal findings, he is briefly taken aback before allowing that, yes, in most large enterprises, they have got their virtualization strategy act together without slamming on the brakes for an extended management pit stop, and yes, some companies are 95 percent saturated, but still, these pesky structural and architectural problems persist. The litany goes on: Many management products are ineffective because they are not automated. Security, lifecycle management, provisioning, software compliance--iy!--they're all compromised.

Not to mention how the bad economy prevents organizations from buying tools, and beleaguered CIOs have pushed down management skills so there are only "pockets of expertise." According to Lynch, "There is a shocking lack of expertise in this space. Data systems managers are used to systems that raise red flags, but virtualization doesn't do that."

And the whole thing only gets worse as virtualized systems become more mission-critical.

Anyway, not to worry because Embotics can fix the whole mess right out of the box by keeping a close eye on VMs across the enterprise, enforcing controls, tracking individual histories to see where things have gone wrong, and automatically extending their stays or decommissioning any malingerers.

Lynch says that his company has "hundreds of deployments" and most customers upgrade every time Embotics comes out with a new product iteration. Say goodbye to VM stall with Embotics.

Question: Is VM stall for real?

Posted by Bruce Hoard on 06/24/2010 at 12:48 PM