There is a seemingly unstoppable phenomenon sweeping the storage, server and desktop environments. The name of that phenomenon - virtualization. The single most benefit that virtualization promises is huge cost reduction – hardware costs, operating costs and more. Indian CIOs have ranked virtualization among their top three technology priorities for this year in our Infrastructure Agenda 2008 Survey.
But it is not hunky dory all the way. The biggest chink in the virtualization armor is security. According to a Gartner report, if server virtualization is carried out without implementing best practices for security, it may increase costs and reduce agility. A report from the research major states that through 2009, 60 percent of production virtual machines (VMs) will be less secure than their physical counterparts.

Security And Complexity
“There is no doubt that the industry is adopting a wait and watch approach to server virtualization after hearing about the security concerns with the hypervisor,” says Rajendra Deshpande, CTO, Intelenet Global. The worry factor for the IT heads is that if one hypervisor or a VM is compromised, it could infect other VMs that reside on the same physical host. Analysts refer to this occurrence as a virtual-machine escape. In such a scenario, the attacker could gain access to the hypervisor and control other virtual machines, and avoid security controls designed to protect the virtual machine. Managing security in a virtualized world is similar to managing security on another operating system. Enterprises need to ensure that the hypervisor is patched with correct configuration and up to date.
“To ensure security, enterprises will spend on software management and administration of virtualized server environments,” says Naveen Mishra, Senior Research Analyst, Gartner. Gartner opines that the process of securing VMs must start before they are deployed, and ideally, before vendors and products are selected. This will equip enterprises to factor security issues during the evaluation and selection process. The virtualization trend is strongest in the server realm. “Server virtualization has both positives and negatives. However, we are still to face any major issues related to it,” says G Rajagopalan, CIO, Tata Power.
Industry experts are of the opinion that in the deployment of VMs the business practices for managing the assets should be reviewed and adapted to reflect the changing environment in the organization. “The benefits of virtualization vary depending on the customer’s objectives and the specific virtualization technologies selected, and the existing IT infrastructure. Not all customers obtain the same benefits from implementing a particular virtualization solution,” says Shailesh Agarwal, country manager, Storage, IBM India and South Asia.
The use of virtualization is a growing trend within data centers as it runs more applications on a single server, making better use of the processing power, and reducing the number of machines. This means higher power to performance ratios and less money spent on cooling more servers.
However, virtualization also adds up to the complexity in the infrastructure by increasing the number of managed virtual resources. IT managers are seeking more advanced capabilities and tools for managing both their physical and virtual systems across multiple architectures and environments.To address the concerns of cost and complexity, players like Red Hat recently introduced an integrated virtualization solution. “Integrated virtualization combines server, storage and management capabilities into a single, easy to deploy solution,” says Nandu Pradhan, President and MD, Red Hat India. This year enterprises can expect vendors to shift their focus from tactical technical issues like CPU utilization and focus on building broader architectural flexibility and redundancy into their application delivery infrastructure — all with higher data security.