DailyTech - How concerned are you with virtualization security?

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DailyTech Poll Discussion How concerned are you with virtualization security?
Steve Kovsky (Blog) - September 29, 2009 5:59 PM

6 comment(s) - last by Justin Time.. on Oct 5 at 12:32 PM

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For more on virtualization security, you can check out DailyTech's previous discussion on the topic.

How concerned are you with virtualization security?

Security concerns are preventing our deployment (60 votes)
9%
Very concerned, we're devoting IT people to securing our virtual machine deployments (81 votes)
13%
Concerned enough to purchase extra software, but not losing much sleep over it (95 votes)
15%
The VM vendor-provided tools are sufficient for our security (148 votes)
23%
Virtualization security is of no concern to us (249 votes)
39%
633 total votes

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I like these polls

By hsoverma on 10/2/2009 11:13:06 AM , Rating: 2

I like the virtualization polls. I am an IT Architect Consultant here in the Raleigh RTP area and we are deploying virtualization to all of our SMB clients because of the flexibility it gives us. (no longer tied to a certain hardware vendor, can take snapshots of the VMs for backup and disaster recovery purposes)

We are using the Citrix Product because for most of our SMBs, the free version (currently 5.5) gives us everything we need. When the customer grows and needs more features, they can then purchase the full version when it become cost effective.

The Microsfot product is a horribly performing solution, and because it has to run on top of an Operating System that has such a large footprint and is prone to security issues, we ruled this out as a solution quite a while ago.

I voted that security from the Vritualization OS is of no concern to us. With strong passwords on the root account and no remote access capability to manage the Virtual OS (except for VPN in a few cases) we feel like it is pretty well protected. We are more concerned about security on the guest OS than on the VM OS itself. Since I feel like I have a good understanding of how the guest OS interacts with the Hypervisor, I am confident that there is little to no chance of the guest os 'infecting' the Hypervisor.

RE: I like these polls

By KLO on 10/2/2009 8:13:18 PM , Rating: 2

The problem with Virtualization and I may be wrong...but it seems that all servers essentially would be connceted to one initial location or several Backup servers... however if all the electricity were to suddenly go out and we were all on the same grid much like these servers then disaster recovery would not save you right? You would still have to phyisically back up somewhere else right? Just wondered. Same thing with electricity it would not be smart. Different unconnected but communicating grids are better. So essentially ring topology is okay but bus topology may work better. Is that how virtualization works in so far backups are concerened?

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RE: I like these polls

By MatthiasF on 10/4/2009 1:41:44 PM , Rating: 2

Well, first of all you'd assume any modern network would have battery backup of some sort. So, if the power goes off, most servers would have time to prepare and power themselves off. This goes for the virtualized and the un-virtualized.

In the event of a disaster, you'd be better prepared with virtualization than with traditional backup methods. With virtualization, you can snapshot each virtual server at more intervals than a typical backup system would cover. So in the event of massive corruption, you could recover faster and with less loss of data than a old fashioned backup to tape.

If it's a hardware problem, you also have the advantage of being able to move a virtual server onto another piece of hardware without as much work. You won't need to worry about drivers and such for each server, just get the virtual host running and the guests will boot like normal.

I'm not sure about your topology question. I don't think many networks run on ring topology anymore, but even in round-robin backup configurations you'd find advantages from virtualization.

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RE: I like these polls

By Justin Time on 10/5/2009 12:32:40 PM , Rating: 2

"The Microsfot product is a horribly performing solution, and because it has to run on top of an Operating System that has such a large footprint and is prone to security issues, we ruled this out as a solution quite a while ago."

Not true, MS have 2 solutions, and one is a standalone hypervisor.

http://www.microsoft.com/hyper-v-server/en/us/defa...

Of course, whether or not it meets your requirements is another issue.

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Enough is enough

By HaZaRd2K6 on 10/1/2009 9:36:12 PM , Rating: 4

Stop with the virtualization crap already. Everyone can see it's just one big Microsoft ad and you aren't fooling anyone.

This is about Microsoft how?

By jefmes on 10/4/2009 1:53:03 PM , Rating: 2

Actually the last few articles I've seen from them has been about VMWare, so I don't know how that's pandering to Microsoft.... ???

Keep up the good work guys, those of us working in the virtualization space like seeing a 3rd party take on the tools, and I know I personally don't get enough time to go benchmarking these things in detail.