Virtualisation is the new bleeding edge of technology and, apart from the Rich Internet Application space, is one of those areas where a titanic battle is on for market dominance. My money is on Linux winning out in the long run :)
The benefits of virtualisation for green computing, power saving, and more efficient utilisation of resources make it the next big thing for data centres. (Besides the data centre, virtualisation is great for software development as well but thats another storey.) It doesn't take a rocket scientists to see that being able to treat your hardware resources as a single pool which can be allocated dynamically to applications on a as-needs basis has huge benefits.
Virtualisation complexity management - emerging solutions
The only problem with virtualisation is the growing complexity in provisioning and managing all these virtual servers that are no longer tied to a specific piece of hardware. Some tools are emerging in this space. At a basic level there is Redhat sponsored "libvirt" api which provides developers with a single set of API's to interface with the myriad of different virtualisation solutions out there. Cobbler is one example of a management application that uses libvirt.
Novell's Platespin - leader of the pack
On the more feature complete, and commercial side, there is Platespin which was recently bought out by Novell and where I got to see the software in action. Whats great about Platespin is that it not only enables you to manage the whole life-cycle of a virtual machine from provisioning to archiving but it also allows you to plan how best to migrate and existing data centre and assists in the migration process
Essentially platespin will monitor your existing data centre for a period of time, inventory machines and work loads and after collecting and analysing the information will provide reports to enable management to decide which machines to virtualise and how best to do it.
Platespin can also help by virtualising existing servers once a plan for conversion has been decided on. After the conversion has been completed platespin will then provide support for the provisioning, resource allocation, backup and retiring of virtual machines all with an easy to use interface.
Over time I am sure other management solutions will emerge but from what I have read Platespin has the edge at the moment.
