Virtual Server Sprawl: FUD or FACT?

At Interop this week, security experts have begun sounding the drum regarding the security risks of virtualization and reminding us that virtual server sprawl magnifies that risk because, well, there are more virtual servers to manage at risk.

Virtual sprawl isn't defined by numbers; it's defined as the proliferation of virtual machines without adequate IT control, [David] Lynch said.

That's good, because the numbers as often cited just don't add up. A NetworkWorld article in December 2007 cited two different sets of numbers from Forrester Research on the implementation of virtualization in surveyed organizations. 

First we are told that:

IT departments already using virtualization have virtualized 24% of servers, and that number is expected to grow to 45% by 2009.

And later in the article we are told:

The latest report finds that 37% of IT departments have virtualized servers already, and another 13% plan to do so by July 2008. An additional 15% think they will virtualize x86 servers by 2009.

It's not clear where the first data point is coming from, but it appears to come from a Forrester Research survey cited in the first paragraph while the latter data set appears to come from the same recent study. The Big Hairy Question is: how many virtual servers does that mean?

This sounds a lot like the great BPM (Business Process Management) scare of 2005 when it was predicted that business users would be creating SOA-based composite applications willy nilly using BPM tools because it required no development skills, just a really good mouse finger with which you could drag and drop web services to create your own customized application.

Didn't happen. Or if it did, it happened in development and test and local environments and never made it to the all important production environment, where IT generally maintains strict control. Every time you hear virtual server sprawl mentioned it goes something like this: "When your users figure out how easy it is..."

"Users", whether IT or business, are not launching virtual servers in production in the data center. If they are, then an organization has bigger concerns on their hands than the issue of sprawl. Are they launching virtual servers on their desktop? Might be. On a test or development machine? Probably. In production? Not likely. And that's where management and capacity issues matter; that's where the bottom line is potentially impacted from a technological black plague like virtual server sprawl; that's where the biggest security and management risks associated with virtualization are going to show themselves.

None of the research cited ever discusses the number of virtual servers running, just the number of organizations in which virtualization has been implemented. That could mean 1 or 10 or 100 virtual servers. We just don't know because no one has real numbers to back it up; nothing but limited anecdotal evidence has been presented to indicate that there is a problem with virtual server sprawl.

I see problems with virtualization. I see the potential for virtualizing solutions that shouldn't be virtualized for myriad reasons. I see the potential problems inherent in virtualizing everything from the desktop to the data center. But I don't see virtual server sprawl as the Big Hairy Monster hiding under the virtual bed.

So as much as I'd like to jump on the virtual sprawl bandwagon and make scary faces in your general direction about the dangers that lie within the virtual world - because many of them are very real and you do need to be aware of them - there just doesn't seem to be any real data to back up the claim that virtual sprawl is - or will become - a problem.