Monitoring problems hamper growth

The roll-out of virtualisation is being hampered by lack of network tools to monitor virtualised environments, according to a global survey, states vnunet.

More than half of firms' applications will be run in virtual environments by 2011, says the survey, carried out by application performance firm Network Instruments, as firms look to consolidate their server estates and increase utilisation rates.

Currently over half of the IT teams polled said they lacked the tools needed to monitor and track these virtual environments.

Telstra is increasingly turning to virtualisation as its core strategy to both manage the rising costs of, and growth in, its data centres, according the company's CIO, John McInerney, says CIO.

Running for the best part of five years, Telstra's virtualisation programme has seen a steady evolution from server farms based on utilisation software through to the latest in server and desktop virtualisation.

Where once the focus was on bringing product to market more quickly, the rising costs of infrastructure management have seen virtualisation come to the fore in the last six months as an additional way for Telstra to trim its IT costs, McInerney says.

The NSW Rural Lands Protection Board (RLPB) has splurged A$300 000 (R1.9 million) on sweeping communication and data centre upgrades, including a state-wide IP network and a fleet of servers with virtualisation software, reports Computerworld.

The RLPB is funded through land rates and provides services including animal health and pest and disease control to the state's farmers and monitors regulation compliance.

The board slashed operating costs and improved ease of management, according to RLPB IT manager Joedy Frape, by consolidating its physical servers with virtualisation and replacing each site's separate Internet connection with a centralised 20Mbps multiprotocol label switching network.