Thoughts on Virtual Infrastructure Management

What does VMware know about storage?

The answer is probably about as much as you do!  Why do I say that?

As we all know, they are owned by EMC and the two are close.  But much like the cobblers children not having shoes, VMware doesn’t seem to have  integrated EMC’s storage expertise yet.  My case in point is how you have to go through and configure different alerts for the different types of VMDKs.  This seems a little tedious, non-descriptive, and almost useless.

95% full for the first alarm when you are running out of space?  Doesn’t that seem a little high?  What seems to be a learned attribute between the two companies are tons of alerts … many, many alerts.

I thought the reason EMC bought SMARTS was to really bring alerts out of ECC under control?  Alerts without context make little or no sense.  Don’t you want to know “who” is filling up the datastore?  Is this normal?  How long do I have before I run out of space?  Did the Storage vmotion case the alert?

I am sure they will add some of this in the coming releases of vSphere.  But how will they keep all of these alerts from just becoming background noise?

Having been on the other side of the fence, it seems to me that VMware is stealing a page from Cisco and others, keep the technology mystical and complex as a barrier to competition.  Now, will Microsoft seize on this and make things simpler to manage?  Time will tell.

Bottom line is that third-party management solutions, specifically those that function as IT referees, will be in high demand for a long time to come based on the way the market is maturing.

February 8, 2010 | Filed Under Virtual infrastructure management | Leave a Comment 

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