What to watch for during a virtual machine’s life cycle

Creation: Enterprise-class configuration of the server and applications, mostly done manually through the virtual-machine manager interface. Automated image-capture of physical machines is starting to take root with such niche vendors as Transitive, particularly in the area of emulating non-x86 processors and running them on other processors, making it possible, for example, to manage Solaris and Windows.

Visibility: Machines set up for a specific purpose - for example, testing or development - can linger without administrators' knowledge. Hyper9's Virtual Infrastructure Search and Analytics tool, a Google-like search engine offering basic discovery and state inspection of virtual machines, will be free for download in September. For application visibility, Tideway Systems' Foundation maps application relationships to the physical and virtual servers.

Load balancing: Virtual machines must move around and change their purpose as needed to handle predictable and on-demand loads. Most organizations do this manually using native VMware ESX, Citrix Systems XenSource and Microsoft Hyper-V controls. Niche products, such as FastScale Technology's FastScale Composer Suite and Evidant's EvidantSP software suite, also are starting to get attention.

Machines in production: Managing live machines is done manually by using native virtual-machine interfaces, but more tools are starting to enable the cross-platform management of some of all of these features on a pick-and-choose basis. Novell's ZENworks, for example, includes asset-, configuration- and patch-management components. Life-cycle points during production include licensing; access controls; patch-, configuration- and change-management; security (settings, default services and ports, antimalware, firewalls and so forth); service-level thresholds for physical machines, virtual machines and applications; and allocation.