You can consider sprawl in two
different ways. Firstly there’s the internal sprawl that operators can know about. If it’s easy to spin up multiple servers, because they have no cost associated with them, people will do so on a whim without considering how much resource they are using. Secondly is offsite sprawl, where your workloads are managed offsite, running somewhere the IT governance organisation doesn’t even know about. This can cause huge cost problems, as people spend a fortune on resources that could have been controlled internally for less money. Another issue with offsite sprawl is the loss of governance, as losing control of your environment can cause compliance issues. A further issue to consider with
Virtualisation allows businesses to consolidate many functions onto a smaller number of servers, without having to go to something like a mainframe.
their network, including systems and servers. As I mentioned earlier, cloud computing gives more control to the end-user. For instance, it gives them the ability to instantly create and destroy areas for their workloads as they need it. However, many people I’ve spoken to are uncomfortable with delegating this control out of the IT department, As we tell them, the best way to do so whilst ensuring the system is sustainable and complaint is to create set activity policies, security boundaries and tightly control
the number of users. IT departments need to become comfortable with delegating this control if they want to add to their business. This illustrates the major change
that is happening to way that IT departments operate. They’re moving away from administrative tasks and towards business development, with a focus on ensuring a positive end- user experience.
Protecting from sprawl
Offsite sprawl can be every bit as costly as its internal cousin.
www.netcommseurope.com
Many people who adopt virtualisation believe it will fix everything for them. However, in most cases they soon realise that some of the same old problems recur. Although they’ve virtualised that hardware layer, there are still operating systems and applications and users there to cause trouble. To some extent this is never going to go away. The biggest problem is that once people see the things they can do with virtualisation and the flexibility that it offers, unless there’s some really good control in place, everybody’s going to want one or more virtual servers. This can lead to a lack of control and to sprawl.
offsite cloud is security. Whilst there’s nothing inherently insecure about it, it’s important to take human error into consideration. For instance, there’s a chance that a workload administrator might create a virtual server without the appropriate security e.g. without a firewall or intrusion detection. This is obviously a huge security risk.
Using the right tools
The most effective way to combat these issues is to ensure staff and end-users have the right tools to enable them to work within a safe and controlled environment. If users have these, they’ll be more willing to stay within the stated bounds. If you make it clear how resources are being used and what the associated costs are, people are more likely to be considerate about what they use. Making individuals accountable will also motivate them to control their workloads. It’s the best way to keep users from going “rogue” and looking for resources elsewhere. It’s clear that the business of IT is dramatically changing and being ‘consumerised’. The technical advancements to provide ‘IT as a service’ were made long ago. We now need to see IT departments update their thinking and business models to fit along side it. I believe this change must come now.
NETCOMMS europe Volume I, Issue 4 2011 33
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60