Maybe somebody can explain it to me, because I’m not getting a clear picture of late from the numerous virtualization events I’ve attended. I’ve read the research, I’ve interviewed architects, systems administrators, consultants and even a few IT execs, and I’ve reviewed information from various vendors on the challenges and solutions around virtualization. So, is complacency the new IT strategy for business-critical virtualization? 

At a recent event that shall remain anonymous, I asked a few of the attendees at lunch what challenges they were facing as they virtualized their infrastructure. One immediate response was “budget”. Now, I understand that there are investments to be made in acquiring the infrastructure and software, and the time it takes to define and resource a project. But, in the face of reducing server provisioning from weeks to minutes, recovering failed systems in seconds and minutes...

Security is one of the top concerns for business who are considering a virtualization solution. In our recent 2011 Symantec Virtualization and Evolution to the Cloud Survey we found that 76% of respondents said that security was a significant concern preventing companies from moving business-critical apps to virtualized servers. 63% also listed security as a major barrier to implementing server virtualization in the workplace. Symantec Endpoint Protection 12 was designed with protection of virtual infrastructure in mind. It allows organizations to deploy higher densities of virtual machines without compromising on security.

• It takes much of the scanning out of each virtual machine, reducing scan overhead by up to 70 percent and disk input/output by as much as 90 percent
• It prevents AV storms by ensuring that simultaneous...

While virtual servers remove many constraints caused by tying operating systems and applications to hardware, they are still subject to the same risks and issues associated with their physical equivalents. A server is a server, with processing, memory and I/O, after all. But just because it shares the same facets as a tin-and-silicon machine, does this mean it should be secured in the same way? To answer this, it’s worth thinking about the architecture that results from server virtualization. You will still have physical servers (it’s a bit hard to do without them) each of which will be running several virtual servers. As such and from a security perspective, you’ve actually added a layer – which can be both a benefit and a constraint.

Advantages & Disadvantages

First, the advantages. In principle, a virtualized environment can benefit from all the security measures already in place in the physical world. If physical servers are in a...