Virtualisation key to next-gen data centres
Published: 21 Sep 2007 09:26 BST
Virtualisation will play an important role in next-generation data centres, but that will also create new challenges that require better security planning, according to IDC.
In a statement on Thursday, Willie Low, senior market analyst of IDC's Asia-Pacific Software Research Group, said: "IDC has identified virtualisation as one of the key technologies underpinning the successful evolution of existing data centres to the next-generation platform."
IDC's latest report revealed that companies will need to incorporate business continuity, disaster recovery and security management into their plans as they look to adopt virtualisation in their data centres.
Results from IDC's latest survey found that three out of the top four management features or tools used in virtualised servers by data-centre managers were directly connected to business-continuity and disaster-recovery issues. These issues were mainly security, maintenance and health monitoring, as well as systems recovery, and backup and disaster recovery.
"The results clearly show that users have come to expect a suite of security and performance-management tools to be available as they adopt virtualisation technology for their data centres," said Low.
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"It is therefore pertinent that business continuity, disaster recovery and security management are built into the equation right at the very beginning when adopting virtualisation, especially as enterprises embark on their plans to upgrade to a next-generation platform for their data centres."
Traditional data-centre concerns, like physical security and perimeter defense, will be superseded by other issues, according to IDC. Managers overseeing next-generation data centres, which are characterised by service-oriented applications running over a virtualised infrastructure, will have to comply with the required business-performance metrics and security requirements.
Resources will also need to be pooled to reduce operational costs and to provide a more flexible environment that will facilitate rapid application deployment, Low said.
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