New "Virtual IT Job" Could Be Very Real
A new role may emerge as virtualizing the entire data center takes hold
That introduces the second major obstacle: the cultural change necessary among personnel, management and even customers. "A technology which introduces some levels of automation brings in even more suspicion because it cuts away the human factor," said Perilli. "We don't consider IT automation as something really smart and reliable yet because we are at the beginning of it."
Sometimes you just need your hands on the equipment
Which leads to the fact that sometimes virtualization gets in the way of operations—something Cisco has considered.
What's lesser known about VFrame is a feature Cisco's Ramakrishnan calls "unvirtualization." "When things go wrong, you need to be able to look at the physical devices to debug anything," he explained. "VFrame can do all the tracing that's needed." It'll map out the servers being used, the application, the switches, the load balancers and storage to enable the user to troubleshoot in a virtual environment.
Dian Schaffhauser is a writer and editor who covers business and technology for a number of publications. Contact her at dian@dischaffhauser.com.
virtualization
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