One of the most impressive experiences at VMworld this past week was a tour of the nearly 150 exhibitor and sponsor exhibits that showcased extraordinarily diverse solutions for managing virtualized resources, and applying virtualization in many other parts of IT infrastructure. Virtualization of I/O resources such as storage and networking are clearly on the upswing. Based on user reactions, there also appeared to be particularly heavy interest in virtualizing desktop systems by means of Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), whereby standard desktop operating systems are hosted in virtual machines that users interact with remotely by means of thin client devices.
As organizations increasingly deploy production server workloads on virtual machines, there is a growing need for more sophisticated tools to manage performance in virtual infrastructures -- and several vendors were on hand showcasing products designed to ease the management burden, focusing particularly on maintaining performance. Finally, several vendors were addressing the growing user concerns about security issues that can arise in virtualized infrastructures. While much of the early attention around virtualization focused on its value as a tactical tool for consolidation, test/development, and maintaining support for legacy workloads, organizations now appear to be driving virtualization into many other critical parts of their infrastructure. The sense at VMworld was that an entire industry is emerging that is retooled around virtual infrastructure.
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