Many IT administrators have already learned the hard way that managing the performance and availability of services built on virtualization technologies can be difficult, if not impossible at times. All too often, early adopters of virtualization have struggled with limited technology features and stability constraints, while learning new ways to effectively manage capacity requirements.

Initial virtualization deployments are typically basic configurations that consist of a couple of physical servers and a dozen virtual machines on a shared, flat network. Often, organizations find that these deployments are only suitable for testing and development, and are not able to meet the needs of demanding production environments very well. Consequently, IT teams need to invest in and effectively deploy such solutions as centralized storage, cluster technologies, networking, and systems management in order to realize successful virtualization initiatives.

Once these IT investments are made, the many benefits of virtualization, such as ease of management and use, are often quickly realized. After these initial successes, however, IT management often starts to be concerned about the growing sprawl of business critical virtual machines and the lack of visibility required to effectively understand the performance of these IT services.