As with all major IT revolutions before it, virtualization has introduced new and difficult management challenges. Traditional management tools and processes are less useful for virtualization deployments, and without new approaches to Virtual Systems Management (VSM), enterprises will suffer from increased downtime, higher costs, staff shortages, lack of flexibility, competitive disadvantage, and many other problems.

This EMA research report provides data and advice on managing virtualization deployments more effectively, including:

• A full description of 18 different VSM disciplines, including how they differ from traditional physical management disciplines, and how they can affect virtualization outcomes, both for better and for worse
• Benchmarks for 17 different VSM metrics, highlighting the best, above average, and below average outcomes, so that enterprises can rank themselves against the best and worst of their peers
• Correlation of the best and worst performers with virtualization management disciplines and tools, and with the importance of integration to effective VSM practices
• A number of case studies based on in-depth focal interviews with organizations involved with VSM initiatives

Table of Contents
Executive Summary
Introduction
Key Disciplines in Virtual Systems Management
Adapting Traditional Lifecycle Management to Virtual Systems
Discovery, Inventory, and Asset Management
Capacity Planning & Management
Provisioning
Patch Distribution
Change and Configuration Management
Monitoring Service Delivery in Virtual Systems
Charge-Back Reporting
Compliance Auditing and Reporting
Remote Control/Out-of-Band
Performance and Availability Monitoring
Security Administration
IT Cost Management
Using Automation to Manage Virtual Systems
Automated Backup and Recovery
Virtual Machine Management
Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity
Event Management/Console Automation
IT Process Automation
Workload Automation
Measuring Best Practices in Virtual Systems Management
Mean Time to Repair (MTTR)
SLA Achievement
Comparing SLA Achievement in Virtual and Physical Environments
Administrator to VM Ratio
Comparing Administrator Efficiency in Virtual and Physical Environments
Inactive Virtual Machine Images
VM Migration Time
New Virtual Machine Deployment Time
Comparing New Machine Deployment in Virtual and Physical Environments
New Application Deployment Time
Comparing Application Deployment in Virtual and Physical Environments
Frequency of Service Impacts
Frequency of Performance or Availability Problems
Frequency of Security Breaches
Backup/Restore Success Rate
Reduced Power Consumption
Server Consolidation Rate
Data Center Floor Space/Rent Reduction
Physical CPU Utilization
Physical Memory Utilization
Physical NIC Utilization
VSM Case Studies
Virtual Systems Management Case Study – Bernalillo County
Virtual Systems Management (VSM) Case Study – Banco Espírito Santo
Virtual Systems Management Case Study – University of Auckland
Virtual Systems Management Case Study – Multnomah County
Virtual Systems Management Case Study – Federal Government Agency
Hewlett-Packard Solutions for Virtualization and Virtual Systems Management
About Hewlett-Packard
EMA Perspective
Appendix A: Demographics and Methodology
Appendix B: Virtualization Taxonomy
Virtualization
Hypervisor
Hardware Virtualization
Server Virtualization
Paravirtualization
Operating System (OS) Virtualization
Application Virtualization
Application Isolation
Software Streaming
Server-Based (or Remote) Desktop Virtualization
Client-Based (or Local) Desktop Virtualization
Storage Virtualization
Network Virtualization
Data Virtualization
Clustering
Grid Computing
Software-As-A-Service (SaaS)
Thin Client