Podcast added on 9/16/09

Shay Mowlem, Director of Virtualization for HP Software, presented on his “Vision for virtualization aware IT management.” During his talk, he made the case that Virtualization goes beyond the surface objective of server consolidation. The real promise of virtualization is to create a dynamic environment in which IT can assemble systems and services around business use cases. In short, virtualization allows IT to be more responsive.

Shay presented a vision in which the IT infrastructure scales based on granular usage patterns, which of course change with the needs of the business. While virtualization resolves some of the hardware issues, it introduces some new management challenges. There is much more complexity with the additional virtualization layers, which means more moving parts in any business service.

So, management means creating a consolidated view of service elements and standardizing on common management platform. In such a dynamic environment, automation is essential. In fact, Shay stated that virtualization is the biggest driver for automation he has ever seen.

He presented an integrated approach for virtualized service management.

1. identify vulnerability
2. isolate root cause
3. identify required changes
4. submit change request
5. implement changs
6. verification and compliance

Having an integrated view of events and performance, physical and virtual, is critical.

Software license governance becomes an even bigger issue with virtualization. It was a problem before, but now with virtual machines, it is even more challenging.

Podcast of Shay Mowlem discussing the impact of virtualization on IT operations.

For HP Operations Center, Peter Spielvogel.

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