Problem Statement:

Despite the benefits associated with virtualization and
virtualized environments, organizations and business units are faced with
challenges that must be overcome in order to fully exploit the capabilities of
their virtualized environments.

Within any virtualized environment there are a limited amount of
resources (CPU, Memory, Disk, etc.) available for allocation across business
units. Delivery of requested virtual
environments to support business unit requests can be negatively impacted if
virtual environment resources are fully allocated. To ensure an adequate amount of resources are
available there has to be proper Server/Desktop virtualization and capacity
planning/management in place. Applications hosted in virtualized environments
often have large data and storage requirements.
In order to support these requirements organizations utilize Storage
Area Network (SAN) devices. The SAN
environment must also have a defined strategy for Capacity Management to avoid
running out of storage needed to create Virtual Machines (VMs) in the
environment.

Since virtualized environments contain multiple server instances
on the same physical piece of hardware, a different approach to environment
security and vulnerability detection has to be taken. With multiple applications being hosted on
the same hardware there is a risk that resources with access to one application
environment could, in theory, access other applications and their associated
resources since they reside on the same hardware platform. The security of virtualized environments, the
approach to vulnerability detection, and associated security measures must be
addressed in order to avoid unauthorized access to applications and related
systems associated with the virtualized environment.

While virtualized environments have made it easier to perform
failover activities in the event of a disaster, the ability to perform a
Disaster Recovery Test has been made more complex. A major challenge with Disaster Recovery
planning in virtualized environments is that in order to perform a Disaster
Recovery test, the failover activities have to be approved and coordinated with
all other applications being hosted in the same physical environment. A method must exist to keep track of all of
the application owners in order for the Disaster Recovery test to be
executed. Without such a method a
Disaster Recovery test could negatively impact a business units’ core
application by taking the physical environment completely offline during a
critical timeframe.

Another challenge is in the area of performance optimization of
business applications in virtualized environments through balanced
transaction/user access among concurrent running programs to support business
groups. Clear methods and techniques
need to be defined in order to ensure the best performance levels are being
achieved from the virtualized environments.

Purpose:

Research Questions:

·
Research
Question #1
– Does the manageability of
system resources becomes less or more
efficient within the virtual environment?

·
Research
Question #2
– Can a virtualized environment
provide the same level of reliability for back-up recovery than a physical
environment?

·
Research
Question #3
– Does a virtual environment
versus a physical environment affect an end-user’s computing experience?