Server virtualization technology has drastically improved hardware utilization, disaster recovery capabilities, and time-to-market. As virtualization has matured and IT organizations have become more familiar with the technology, it has seen greater use for more mission-critical applications. But management challenges can ultimately limit the amount of cost you can drive out of your environment. Forrester believes that more virtualization-aware management tools and processes are necessary before we can fully virtualize our production servers and reach the lowest-possible cost per VM. You can overcome barriers to virtual server scalability and wider production deployment by adopting better tools and processes that aggregate information from virtual systems, provide real-time control, and reduce overhead by consolidating management tasks.

Forrester endeavored to determine the top priorities and challenges of today's virtualization professionals through fielding and analysis of a survey of 164 virtualization professionals. This study included inquiry into the current role of virtualization in the overall environment and barriers to further deployment, as well as how performance is measured for both the environment and those managing virtualized servers.

Check out this paper to read about Forrester's research findings regarding server virtualization performance and cost-efficiency.