Virtualization

Managing the VM Center and Multi-Vendor Environment
The requirements for managing the virtualized environment are equal to those required to manage the physical environment. However, as virtualized systems enter critical production phases, an outside in management framework becomes essential for virtualization security.

Unique challenges to the virtualized world:

• Tracking of VM from physical to physical machine across hypervisors.
• Crash dump analysis in the hypervisor and means of remote remediation.
• Low level configuration and change management.
• Determining and managing HVAC requirements.
• Network enabled consoles are open to threats of intrusion because everyone can get to them.

TDI has built the integration with VMware's Virtual Center providing:

• Automatic tracking of moved VMs and their guest operating systems.
• Full command and control of all ESX servers and host VMs.
• Full event management for Virtual Center, ESX Servers and VMotion activity.
• 'Serial' console connectivity for each VM, regardless of the state of the guest operating system.
• 'Follow me' console connectivity capability (ESX via Virtual Center and VMotion).
• Physical hardware 'out of band' connectivity via management card or serial console port.
• Comparison of pre and post virtualized environment console traffic patterns to allow analysis of 'success factor'.
• Start, stop, pause, resume virtual machine commands.
• Automatic detection of virtual machines on the network.
• ConsoleWorks Engine robust event management features enabled by IEM technology for Xen, ESX, and Virtual Center.

For the XEN and HP virtual environments, TDI's products deliver a Virtual Center-like capability. TDI's products manage a XEN environment the same way as a VMware state.

Automatic tracking of moved VMs
As the diagram below shows, TDI monitors the guest through a persistent, no footprint access. As the VM application moves from one machine to another, TDI's "outside in" management platform disconnects the link in the first machine and then reconnects it in the new one.

Throughout this process, TDI manages the log files in real time and moves those with the application so there is no opportunity for someone to maliciously modify the system. In a XEN or other environment, TDI offers the same feature but TDI essentially provides the Virtual Center functionality for those environments since they do not natively have one.

Full command and control of all ESX servers and host VMs
TDI serves as a single "command and control system" for multiple virtual environments from different vendors. Today, VMware commands approximately 87% of the virtualization market. XEN, HP, Oracle and other firms are coming into the market and it has been estimated that within 7 years, VMware will command approximately 5% of the market.

Thus the world of managing heterogeneous virtualized environments is here. TDI's "outside in" management system already manages these virtualized environments.

More importantly, do you need multiple monitors for multiple virtualized environments?

TDI enables a single interface to give you full command and control access to all your virtualized systems, as the diagram below demonstrates:



Full event management for Virtual Center, ESX Servers and XEN
TDI have developed patented IEM technology for both the Virtual Center and XEN (XEN and HP XEN) environments. TDI will continue to develop IEM's for Oracle and other virtualized environments.

IEM's enable the hypervisor, virtual machine, guest operating system, and ILO/DRAC/management card messages to be stored and enable the remediation of problems as they occur. Since TDI is an "outside in" management system, it enables users to identify root causes for hypervisor problems, remediate them even if the OS or hypervisor is not functioning.

TDI's Virtualization Security Manager watches the SAN (or NAS) infrastructure for any messages that might alert on issues that could occur within the fiber channel fabric, disk farm, and controller that would render the virtual environment ineffective.