Bladewatch.com

http://www.serverwatch.com/trends/article.php/3684161

When planning a virtual deployment, you have a lot to consider: which servers, which workloads, which processes and more. Return on investment and total cost of ownership (TCO) often lead the charge. Security is often an afterthought, and nearly always relegated to the back seat.

This, according to Neil MacDonald, vice president and Gartner fellow, is a big mistake. MacDonald, who emphasized that he is not against virtualization, is firm in his belief that, “security processes and technologies need to be modified for a virtualized environment.”

In his presentation “Securing Virtualization: Virtualizing Security,” delivered at the Gartner IT Infrastructure, Operations & Management Summit in Kissmmee, Fla. last week, MacDonald said that in the rush to virtualize, enterprises often neglect security in favor of operational gain.

Very cool, virtualization as a concept first introduced can be a challenging concept to appreciate, that previously I’ve always bought the server can make being given a virtual machine or 20% of  DL585 can be unsettling. This though is where looking at the big picture is necessary, you don’t need to fix everything at once, but you do need to appreciate the billing/charging, the support, the ownership; all the kind of things that can derail the project, focus on what technologies, what setup you need in order to successfully deploy and support a virtual infrastructure, and speak to people, you’d be surprised how many other people have had similar problems.

Consider the security patch process, patching physical servers is fine, move on to a virtual server estate where machines might be powered off, can make it more complicated, particularly if the applications have specific network requirements, that application7 needs its own v-LAN, how will you patch it going forward?  Securing the virtual infrastructure remains an important topic of conversation, particularly as the IT becomes a commodity, as we move to shared infrastructure and even VMotion – who has rights to view the virtual servers? Who can move the virtual machines around?

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