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Virtualization: A miracle cure that systems management has been waiting for?

I've changed the sentence around slightly, but this was said to me by someone who I was talking to during Infosecurity Europe 2008.

The vendor of virtualization sales guy had convinced this person that once a server was virtualized, it suddenly became easier to manage, almost to the extent that it required no management at all.

I beg to differ.

Does a virtual server require any updates or applications ? I asked. Do you need to track installed software on them to ensure that you are compliant?

The Infosecurity attendee suddenly realised that just because a server was now virtual, it still had the same systems management lifecycle as a real one.

Novell is nicely placed to offer a complete solution. We have a robust, cost effective, hypervisor with SLES / XEN, heavy lifting tools from PlateSpin, intelligent management from Orchestrator and the complete lifecycle in the shape of ZCM / ZLM / ZAM.

Back to our starting question. Virtualization is not a miracle cure for systems management; think of it as the purchase and then disposal stages of a traditional asset lifecycle.