Hybrid Cloud For Dummies

Managing Virtualization

A management infrastructure is going to be key in a hybrid cloud world. In fact, when virtualization is used in cloud computing, it’s quite possible that the management software you use in your data center will fall short. You need to consider how you want to handle management, which includes provisioning resources as well as dealing with security and capacity planning. Face it: This is new territory. Although it’s still early, different models are emerging. For example, some of the virtualization vendors are offering management solutions. Service management vendors are also looking to provide tools to manage hybrid virtualization.

When managing virtualization, the service provider (whether it’s your IT organization or a cloud provider) must be able to do the following:

Know and understand the relationships among all elements of the network.

Be able to change things dynamically when elements within this universe change.

Keep placement of virtual resources in step with all the other information held in the configuration management database (CMDB). A CMDB stores configuration items that detail the attributes of individual entities in an IT environment. Given ...