Control your virtual machines
- TAGS:Hypervisor, separation of duties, virtual machines
- IT TOPICS:Data Center, Emerging Technology, Enterprise Apps, Government & Regulation, Management, Networking, Security
 Virtual machines should make IT managers nervous. Yes, yes, VMs save labor and hardware costs, a boon for tight data center budgets. No more hassles with purchasing departments to get new hardware and you also can roll up the internal IT bureaucratic folderol of system, network and security administration into one job-the virtual machine administrator. The more VMs you have, the fewer admins you need.
But that "collapsing of business processes" is exactly what worries Michael Berman, chief technology officer at Catbird Networks Inc. in Scotts Valley, Calif. He argues VMware's Hypervisor adds two unique problems to your data center. The first, of course, is in the specific security vulnerabilities in the Hypervisor code itself. But Berman says the second area of change control is by far the most critical. He claims Catbird's new HypervisorShield service detects Hypervisor vulnerabilities, but more importantly lets you apply your company's change-control policies developed for the physical server world to your virtual one, an absolute necessity in organizations that must delineate separation of duties in the data center for compliance reasons. According to Berman, the new service "looks over the shoulder of the virtual machine administrator" to assure everything is running according to Hoyle.The service begins on January 14 at $18 per month.
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