Mar 22, 2007

Would You Please Get Those VM’s Under Control!


With all the recent controversy in financial markets and politics, it’s time for us geeks to stir up a little controversy of our own. A recent article in the Register talks about the challenges in managing Virtual Machines and licensing issues associated with the ability to deploy new (virtual) servers at will. A recent blog at Server Virtualization captured some of the opinions regarding the topic of how closely you should control the VM’s in your environment and whether or not developers can/should “hide a VM under their desk.”

Instead of finding new ways to circumvent your IT department, what if your IT department could provide you access to the VM’s you need, when you need them? When you’re done with your VM’s, you could give them back so that others can use them. Since there’s no physical asset, borrowing a VM should be easy. What if your IT department could go one step further and provide your VM’s freshly installed with the O/S and applications you need. This is a win-win situation. The IT department can still keep tabs on server resources and software licenses. And developers get access to the environments they need in their dev/test cycles. Cassatt Collage can help you set up this dynamic VM environment. (Read more)

At Cassatt, our IT director, Kirk, is the one who’s on the hook for Sarbanes-Oxley compliance. I really don’t want to see Kirk go to jail for failure to comply with software licenses-- one of the possible consequences of not getting a handle on how many VM's you have in your enterprise. After all, Kirk is a nice guy, and he does bring farm-fresh eggs for Karen, our CFO. So even though I’m a developer at heart, I do my part to make sure that Kirk stays out of the slammer, Karen gets her eggs, and I get my paychecks. So don't you think it might be worthwhile to get those VM's under control?


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