Seven Requirements for Balancing Control and Agility in the Virtual Environment

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Seven Requirements for Balancing Control and Agility in the Virtual EnvironmentBy BMC Software and VMwareTable of Contents Executive Summary......................................................................................................................1
Agility Versus Control...................................................................................................................2>> The Need for Agility.....................................................................................................................2>> Increased Agility Presents Control Challenges...........................................................................3>> Achieving a Balance Between Agility and Control......................................................................4
Seven Requirements to Achieve Balance..................................................................................41. Address All Types of Change......................................................................................................42. Intelligently Employ Best-Practice Processes.............................................................................43. Manage by Exception..................................................................................................................54. Provide a Comprehensive, Near-Real-Time View of the IT Infrastructure..................................55. Automate and Integrate Wherever Possible...............................................................................56. Address Server Sprawl with Change and Configuration Management Processes....................67. Accommodate Heterogeneous Environments............................................................................6
Applying the Approach................................................................................................................6>> Change Initiated by VMware High Availability (Unplanned/Authorized/Pre-approved)...............6>> Change Initiated by a VirtualCenter Administrator (Unplanned/Unauthorized)...........................7>> VMware DRS Policy-Driven Change (Unplanned/Authorized/Pre-approved)..............................7>> Change Initiated by BMC Remedy Change Management (Planned/Authorized).......................7
Contain, Comply, Improve, and Save.........................................................................................8
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................8 Executive Summary
It's no surprise that the dynamic nature of a virtualized data center environment presents management challenges that are new and sometimes different from a purely physical environment. With virtualization comes a higher level of speed and flexibility, creating the need for a more disciplined approach to service management - an approach that has more effective processes and controls. But control must not come at the expense of agility. IT has to keep the IT infrastructure agile to meet changing conditions in today's technology and business environments.
Control and agility appear to be in direct opposition. In fact, in many organizations, two groups have arisen: virtualization advocates who strive for agility, and process advocates who champion greater control. IT needs to strike the optimum balance between control and agility, and bring these two groups together.
In the nonvirtualized environment, solutions streamline and automate many change and configuration management processes. These solutions give IT greater visibility and control of the IT infrastructure while still permitting the level of change necessary to ensure agility. So how does IT optimize and leverage the processes and solutions used in the nonvirtualized environment to meet the requirements of the virtualized environment? BMC and VMware have joined forces to provide an answer to that question. The two companies have developed an approach to service management in the virtualized data center that enables IT to strike the optimum balance between control and agility. This paper describes that approach.
The paper discusses the agility enabled by virtualization and the resulting control challenges. It presents a way to meet those challenges and describes seven major requirements for success. The paper reviews how the BMC/VMware approach ... [download for more]