"Where standards would really help is these interfaces for controlling and manipulating virtual machines and getting feedback on them," says Forrester's Gillett, noting that basic virtualization is being commoditized at the chip and operating system levels. VMware, Xen developers, Intel Corp. and others are discussing the need for higher-level standards but have yet to reach a consensus.

Stewart Hubbard, director of IT engineering at Coldwater Creek Inc., a clothing retailer in Sandpoint, Idaho, has about 60 production servers running in ESX Server virtual machines. He says resource allocation is a big issue.

"When a particular machine starts to get hammered and the resources aren't available, you'll see a noticeable dip, and the end users will notice it," he says. Right now, he uses VirtualCenter to address the issues, one machine at a time. And because not all application vendors support their software running in virtual machines, he uses a tool from PlateSpin Ltd. to migrate virtual machines back onto physical servers for technical support purposes.

While virtualization-specific management tools are a good option today, ultimately, "you need something that manages the virtual and the physical together," says Gillett. BladeLogic Inc., which offers a virtualization-aware configuration life-cycle management tool, contends that a single set of policies should control both worlds. Once the policy and "personality" of a server are defined, "every instance of the server, whether physical or virtual, is treated more as a compliance exercise," says Vick Vaishnavi, director of product marketing at Blade-Logic in Waltham, Mass.

Qualcomm's Fjeldheim says he sees no reason to wait for all the pieces of the management puzzle to come together. Integrated tools would be nice to have, but "we're happy to use the tools that are specific to the virtual environment. It's not that big a deal," he says.