Machine sprawl threatens virtualisation benefits

Virtual machine sprawl happens precisely because these machines are so easy to create and move around, says Veeam's Warren Olivier.

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Uncontrolled virtual machine (VM) sprawl can undermine the business case for virtualisation.

So says Warren Olivier, territory manager at Veeam, a virtual infrastructure management and data protection company, who points out that IT managers need to deploy new tools to manage much more complex environments.

He defines virtual machine sprawl as having a large amount of virtual machines on a network without the proper IT management or control.

Virtualisation giant, VMware says virtual machine sprawl is one of the biggest concerns facing many companies using desktop or server virtualisation.

It adds that the ability to quickly create virtual machines without the disciplines and controls of the physical world results in machines being provisioned unnecessarily without proper justification and approval, over-provisioned (too much CPU, memory or disk), or consuming resources well after they are no longer required.

The company points out that e-mail messages, files, databases and storage resources are some information technologies that suffer from sprawl issues.

Olivier identifies three major issues in managing virtual environments - sprawl, right-sizing and monitoring.

"Virtual machine sprawl happens precisely because these machines are so easy to create and move around," says Olivier. "If your development team needs five machines to test their code on, you can deliver in 10 minutes instead of waiting weeks to go through a procurement process. But do you remember to delete those five machines when they're no longer needed?

"People tend to go crazy," Olivier adds. "Then you're using up more disk space, more memory, more CPU cycles, more power... in the worst cases, you could end up with exactly the same costs as before you virtualised, with extra licence fees added on top."

Olivier says the problem is worsened when virtual machines are not right-sized. "Most companies have a virtual machine template they roll out as standard - two CPUs, 8GB memory, so much storage space - but does every machine really need that much?

"In many cases, 4GB of memory is quite enough. If every machine you create is over-specced, your consolidation ratio drops - which is a problem because that's what the business case is based on."

According to Olivier, resource wastage can also threaten the promised benefits of virtualising. "In the same light, virtual machines that are 'starving resources' are not efficient and could be running poorly. With right-sizing reports, customers can run meaner and leaner and reach the ROI quicker."

In order to control virtual machine sprawl, VMware says organisations must reduce the number of needlessly provisioned or over-provisioned machines. It believes gaining better control of machine inflow is much easier than trying to weed out unnecessary or over-provisioned machines at a later date.

The virtualisation giant says a typical company with 1 000 virtual machines - with 5% of machines created without proper business justification and another 5% over-provisioned - could easily save $100 000 to $150 000 in capital expenditures through better control of the front-end provisioning process.

By delivering the right-sized machine at the right service level, companies can eliminate waste, improve resource utilisation, and lower costs, it concludes.