The survey found that organizations are deploying a wide range of virtualization platforms including virtualization technology built into UNIX, Linux and Windows operating systems.
VMware has the highest penetration with 60%, and almost a third said they use VMware exclusively. Around half of those using VMware said they expect to increase their usage of these virtualization platforms, and the other half say they may evaluate other virtualization platforms in the future.
When it comes to hypervisors (a computer/hardware platform virtualization software allowing multiple operating systems to run on a host computer simultaneously), 58% of respondents said they have hypervisors from more than one vendor.
According to Centrify, they are deploying bare-metal hypervisors from vendors such as VMware and Citrix at the same time as leveraging virtualization technology built into the latest AIX, HP-UX, Solaris, Linux and Windows operating systems. Over 24% of virtualized environments have no VMware, but use virtualization solutions from Microsoft, IBM, Citrix, Sun, HP and others.
Security issues
Despite the increasing use of virtualization, users were not confident about whether they had complete control of the security of their virtual systems. Security, compliance and operational issues were the top three concerns.
A majority (70%) believed they had orphan accounts on UNIX/Linux, 44% shared root passwords, and 55% were unsure about how well they managed privileged user accounts. Security concerns were also the leading reason (46%) that virtualization could be slowed.
Less than a third (28%) of respondents said they were “strongly confident” in the security of their physical servers, and even fewer (20%) were strongly confident about their virtualized environment.
A CSO of one of the responding organizations with thousands of servers and more than 80 000 employees, said: “We are playing catch-up, cost drivers pushed virtualization without [us] properly looking at [the] security impact.”
Frank Cabri, vice president of marketing and product management at Centrify, said: “Because creating a new server in a virtual environment is as easy as copying a file – and in some instances the software is free – the rigor that used to accompany setting up a server has been bypassed. Ensuring appropriate access controls and privileges is critical in this environment.”