Overheard - Virtualization sprawl is like ‘The Trouble with Tribbles’

“When we started out with virtualization, we thought, ‘VMs are easy and cheap, so let’s go. Let’s create as many as we need.’ We ended up with several hundred more machines than we actually needed.” Chuck Brust, as quoted in Virtualization users beware: Sprawl is real

Today’s Word of the Day is virtualization sprawl.   It wasn’t such an important consideration when VMs were just used for testing, but now that we’re finding VMs in production, vendors are scrambling to come up with tools that allow administrators to monitor and manage VMs more efficiently so that virtualization remains cost-effective. The holy grail? A tool that allows the admin to see and manage both physical machines and VMs from one dashboard.

Every time I read about virtualization sprawl, I’m reminded of the Start Trek espisode The Trouble with Tribbles. Click - new server.  Click- new server.  Click - new server.  Will the exponential propogation of VMs will eat any profits we might have gained from moving to virtualization?