Virtualization not only improves hardware efficiency via server consolidation, itdramatically reduces the time required to bring a new server online from weeks or months to hours or minutes. This ability to bring machines online quickly provides companies with improved business agility. As with most improvements new issues can be created, and if not addressed, can reduce a virtual infrastructure’s overall efficiency over time.
Virtual machine sprawl is one of the biggest concerns facing many companies using desktop or server virtualization. The ability to quickly create virtual machines without the disciplines and controls of the physical world results in machines being provisioned unnecessarily without proper justification and approval, over-provisioned (too much CPU, memory, or disk), or consuming resources well after they no longer are required.
To address this concern, a number of reporting products have been created to help track and identify virtual machine sprawl. The problem with report-only products is they provide only a partial solution. They only help identify the problem and track it whether it is getting better or worse. They do nothing to prevent the problem or correct it once it has occurred. This white paper looks at how a cloud automation platform can help decrease virtual machine sprawl by automating the process of reducing, reusing, and recycling compute resources in a shared physical infrastructure.