Emailing "Virtualization in 2009"
What will 2009 hold for one of our favorite green computing topics?
ServerWatch's Amy Newman
gazes into her crystal ball and comes up with some pretty solid predictions. I have to agree with her assertion that the stalled economy plays into the technology's favor. However, she also touches on another topic that's near and dear to my heart: security.
So far, virtual machine platforms have remained largely immune to security breaches. But expect hackers to pour more effort into the holy grail: hacking the hypervisor for full access to guest operating systems.
For some time analysts have predicted a security breach would bring the public's attitude toward virtualization back down to earth. Surprisingly, that has not yet happened. As the number of virtual deployments increases, however, so does the likelihood. Especially given the current economic climate, where many enterprises are thinking in terms of short-term savings and virtualizing without proper process.
It may be a perennial prediction at this point, but with as companies virtualize as quickly as they can to save money on equipment, mistakes will be made. These mistakes will range from virtual machine sprawl to wrongly provisioned hardware (most likely resulting in downtime) to gaping security holes.
Read the
rest of her predictions here.