Achieving Business Performance Goals through Virtualization Management Best Practices

Achieving Business Performance
Goals through Virtualization
Management Best Practices
®An ENTERPRISE MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATES (EMAT) White Paper Prepared for eG Innovations, Inc
April 2008
IT Management Research, Industry Analysis, and ConsultingAchieving Business Performance Goals through
Virtualization Management Best Practices
Executive SummaryVirtualization is a key technology that is changing the way system hardware is used. It is also changing the way desktop environments are delivered, and how users interact with core systems and applications. Outcomes from virtualization include improved system utilization, reduced downtime, improved business continuity, and better service level achievement.However, there are significant inhibitors to a successful virtualization deployment. Specifically, the management and monitoring software that comes with the common virtualization platforms is not enough to meet the business or technical goals of virtualization. It does not provide the cross-domain metrics for technical administrators to effectively monitor and manage performance on a wide scale. It does not provide the correlation across physical and virtual systems that IT service managers need to ensure fast problem triage and resolution. It does not provide the high-level performance and service measurements that CIOs need to assure business service levels. Virtual environments instead need comprehensive and sophisticated performance moni-toring tools that understand the whole environment - physical and virtual - and that can track, analyze, and prevent problems across the end-to-end IT service infrastructure. Such solutions need to span technologies and platforms across diverse multi-tier environments in order to deliver business goals for the CIO,
Virtual environments need service goals for the IT service manager, and technical goals for the system administrators. They need to cover key areas including discov-comprehensive and sophisticated ery, physical infrastructure monitoring, virtual infrastructure monitor-performance monitoring tools that ing, system and application monitoring, and connecting the pieces in a holistic view.understand the whole environment - physical and virtual - and that This EMA white paper investigates these issues in more detail, out-lining the key drivers and outcomes of virtualization, explaining criti-can track, analyze, and prevent cal inhibitors to virtualization success (and how to overcome them), problems across the end-to-end and describing core virtualization performance management solu-tion requirements. It also briefly describes one such solution, the eG IT service infrastructure. Enterprise Suite, and includes a short case study highlighting this solu-tion in action.
Virtualization - A Short IntroductionVirtualization is a technique for hiding the physical characteristics of computing resourc-es from the way in which other systems, applications, or end users interact with those resources. Server virtualization, for example, allows multiple operating environments ('guests') to run on a single physical server ('host'). Remote desktop virtualization ex-tends these virtual environments to end users, allowing them to access a centrally hosted 'virtual desktop' from any physically remote system.EMA research reveals that over 90% of enterprises rate certain business drivers as ei-ther critical or important to their decision to implement virtualization. These include improved system utilization, reduced downtime, improved business continuity, and better service level achievement. Virtualization helps to deliver these goals in several ways, for example:
Page ©2008 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. All Rights Reserved. IT Management Research, Industry Analysis, and ConsultingAchieving Business Performance Goals through
Virtualization Management Best Practices
. D ynamic workload management and centrally hosted desktops increase server utilization and reduce physical desktop system requirements, while extending the usable life of existing desktop PCs.. F aster (and cheaper) support of systems, applications, and even desktops from a central location reduces repair times, delivers new services and applications faster, and improves business continuity.. C entral management, support, and protection of corporate ... [download for more]