Business continuity key to data center virtualization

Virtualization will play an important role in next-generation data centers, but that will also create new challenges that require better security planning, according to IDC.

In a statement Thursday, Willie Low, senior market analyst of IDC's Asia-Pacific Infrastructure Software research, said: "IDC has identified virtualization as one of the key technologies underpinning the successful evolution of existing data centers to the next-generation platform."

IDC's latest report revealed that companies in the Asia-Pacific region will need to incorporate business continuity, disaster recovery and security management into their plans as they look to adopt virtualization in their data centers.

Results from its latest survey found that three out of the top four management features or tools used in virtualized servers by data center managers were directly connected to business continuity and disaster recovery issues. These issues were mainly security, maintenance and health monitoring, as well as systems recovery and backup/disaster recovery.

"The results clearly show that users have come to expect a suite of security and performance management tools to be available as they adopt virtualization technology for their data centers," said Low.

"It is therefore pertinent that business continuity, disaster recovery and security management are built into the equation right at the very beginning when adopting virtualization, especially as enterprises embark on their plans to upgrade to a next-generation platform for their data centers."

Traditional data center concerns like physical security and perimeter defense will be superseded by other issues.

According to IDC, managers overseeing next-generation data centers, which are characterized by service-oriented applications running over a virtualized infrastructure, will have to comply with the required business performance metrics and security requirements.

Resources will also need to be pooled to reduce operational costs and to provide a more flexible environment that will facilitate rapid application deployment, Low said.