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Storage Expo: 90% of UK organisations plan to invest in virtualisation
October 2009 by Storage Expo
Research conducted for the upcoming Storage Expo exhibition has revealed that 90% of UK organisations have already migrated - or are planning to migrate - to a virtualised environment.
The figures were revealed when Storage Expo researchers asked the question – ‘are your current system management and monitoring tools able to support virtualisation?’ - of more than 400 IT professionals.
23% responded: ‘yes our current tools will enable us to keep access available’.
And a further 67% responded in the affirmative to the question: ‘we are investing in new tools to enable us to manage virtualised infrastructure’.
According to Natalie Booth, event director with Storage Expo, these responses mean that 90% of organisations polled for the survey are using or planning to use some form of virtualisation technology with their IT systems.
"Our research also found that, whilst security is holding back (30%) of organisations polled, the majority (60%) plan to invest in new technology to tackle the security problems created by the migration to a virtual environment," she added.
Tony Lock, programme director with Freeform Dynamics, said that virtualisation is adding new challenges all around but the biggest security challenges are matters of process rather than technology fixes.
"This, of course, also makes them more difficult to address as one cannot rush out and buy a process fix in the same way one can acquire a new firewall or virus scanner," he said.
According to Mr Lock, several issues must be carefully considered in any virtualisation project.
In most organisations that have undertaken such projects, he says, the primary approach has centred upon consolidation projects, which have caused multiple virtual machines - or instances to be run on single server platforms or to create virtualised pools of storage.
"By placing multiple applications on a single server or accessing a single resource pool of storage the resiliency of the physical platforms becomes incredibly important," he said.
"In ‘pre-virtualisation’ days if a single x86 server failed only a single group of users were likely to be affected. If a virtual server dies it can potentially take with it a number of applications and a much higher number of users," he added.
It’s against this backdrop that Mr Lock advises that good systems monitoring tools and management processes that can be used to keep access available are now essential.
