10 Reasons Not to Virtualize
Securing Your Journey to the Cloud
Virtualization is a good thing
• Virtualization and private cloud
– Enabled server consolidation
– Created more flexible environments
– Saved companies a ton of money
4/8/2015
Confidential | Copyright 2012 Trend Micro Inc.
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But . . .
• Trend Micro’s recent survey of 1200 companies with
more than 500 employees showed that only 59% had
server virtualization in production or pilot
• Based on our position as the #1 virtual server security
vendor, here are 10 situations where you should consider
not virtualizing
4/8/2015
Confidential | Copyright 2012 Trend Micro Inc.
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Static, predictable computing
• Already operationalized and stable
• Little benefit to risking more complexity and downtime . . .
– . . . Except older, unsupported OS
4/8/2015
Confidential | Copyright 2012 Trend Micro Inc.
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Virtualization unfriendly licensing
Unlicensed
• Not allowed in virtual environment
Unsupported
• Run at your own risk
Won’t run
• Required dedicated hardware
• Dongle / Graphics Card
4/8/2015
Confidential | Copyright 2012 Trend Micro Inc.
5
It just won’t work well
Disk intensive workloads
• High performance DB
• Pass-through disk may help here
Grid of distributed SMP “number crunching”
• Requires high speed interconnectivity
Requires Hardware Card
• Virtualisation Driver unavailable
Graphics-intensive apps
• Needs high end video card
4/8/2015
Confidential | Copyright 2012 Trend Micro Inc.
6
Time drift
• VMs store time apart from physical host
– VM & physical clock diverge
• Particularly sensitive
– Financial real-time trading apps
– Some industrial control
systems
4/8/2015
Confidential | Copyright 2012 Trend Micro Inc.
7
You work for a cheapskate
• Any worthwhile IT project requires a budget
• If you don’t have a way to pay for the project,
don’t start it.
• Halfway implemented virtualization
without adequate tools is worse
than whatever you have today.
4/8/2015
Confidential | Copyright 2012 Trend Micro Inc.
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Running servers at high capacity
• Adding a hypervisor to a pegged server does
nothing to help performance
• Adding another server just to provide cycles
for a hypervisor isn’t a good investment
4/8/2015
Confidential | Copyright 2012 Trend Micro Inc.
9
No safe way to manage encryption keys
• Key management is easy on physical servers
– But Virtual secure workloads move around
• Encryption key management designed
for physical servers won’t work
– It’s not secure to store passwords or
certificates on individual VMs
• Policy based encryption key
management required
4/8/2015
Confidential | Copyright 2012 Trend Micro Inc.
10
App clustering for failover
• Modern virtualization platforms offer various flavors
of high availability for VMs.
• Older mission critical apps have HA already
– Microsoft Cluster Services with a shared
disk will break in private clouds that allow
VMs to automatically move around
• If the VM platform provides HA,
your apps shouldn’t, and vice versa
4/8/2015
Confidential | Copyright 2012 Trend Micro Inc.
11
To save money on VDI
• Hardware isn’t where the savings are
– Servers cost more than cheap desktops
– You still have to buy a PC or tablet or thin client
• Virtual desktops are great for security and compliance
– but they are not a lower cost option for all types of employees
• They are more efficient for some types of employees
– Call center, line workers, etc.
4/8/2015
Confidential | Copyright 2012 Trend Micro Inc.
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Virtualization platform components
Virtualisation
Platform needs
AD / DNS
AD won’t start
because it
needs the
hypervisor
AD or DNS is
virtualised
Hypervisor won’t
start without AD
4/8/2015
Confidential | Copyright 2012 Trend Micro Inc.
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The complete list
• When you have static, predictable computing needs
• When you can’t get a virtualization friendly license
• When it just won’t work very well
• When time drift will hurt your apps
• When you work for a cheapskate
• When you’re already running servers at high capacity
• When you don’t have a way to manage encryption keys
• When you use clustered apps with built in failover
• When you want to save money on all desktops by virtualizing them
• When you are running virtualization platform components
4/8/2015
Confidential | Copyright 2012 Trend Micro Inc.
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That said…
You will be virtualized. Resistance is futile.
4/8/2015
Confidential | Copyright 2012 Trend Micro Inc.
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Copyright 2012 Trend Micro Inc.