The management drawbacks of virtualization

Posted on Monday April 23, 2018

IT managers turn to virtualization to effectively scale down on cost, boost efficiency, and maximize space in their server rooms. Yet, what they didn't expect were the drawbacks involved in this technology solution. It's therefore essential that you're aware of the following management issues before going all in:

Backup

Incorporating a robust backup system in a virtualized setting can become a huge challenge. You'd have to determine which data you want to store and how often it should be backed up. You would then have to decide whether you should back up all your virtual machines or just some vital ones that have important apps and data.

In any case, you'll be caught in a grueling battle because of the overwhelming amount of data that needs to be backed up. The only way to overcome this is to integrate a powerful backup-to-disk solution offered by a reputable managed services provider (MSP).

Security

Security concerns are more complicated in a virtualized setting since you have to monitor security on a couple of tiers: virtual machine security and physical host security.

A compromised physical host security will affect every virtual machine running on this particular host server. Meanwhile, a compromised virtual machine will disrupt the physical server and affect every virtual machine residing on the same host. To address this, you need to set up strong network defenses -- including firewalls, intrusion prevention systems, antivirus software, and virtual machine security tool -- and a hardened physical security system -- in the form of surveillance cameras, locks, biometric scans, and security guards. Of course, if you don't have the funds to set these up, it may make more sense to leave it to a security-conscious MSP.

Monitoring

Since your team has to oversee both virtual machines and physical servers to ensure that you have a fully operational environment, it does have a few pain points.

First, running a monitoring software on the physical host server is likely to impact the virtual machines' performance since it takes up valued processing power and memory. That means you'll need to compute the resources used by your monitoring software and make sure it's not consuming too much from your physical host server.

Second, keeping tabs on your virtual machines, making sure it's secure and running at all times, is a full-time job. So unless you have a team of professionals in-house, you'll definitely need some help from the outside.

Without a doubt, virtualization brings a lot of benefits to the table, but you have to know how it affects every aspect of your business -- particularly issues involved in management. Let us show you how you can use it to its full potential. Just give us a call today!