With the explosion of job-specific appliances, it is common today to find several appliances monitoring a single resource. A typical scenario, for example, is three appliances monitoring the same connection, with one monitoring flows, another doing performance analysis and a third providing intrusion detection functionality.

Since cost, space and power are major issues for data centers, reducing the appliance footprint is becoming a major consideration. While some appliances require all the processing power they can get and cannot share resources -- such as 10 Gigabit Ethernet -- there are a number of monitoring, analysis and appliances that do not require as much processing resources and can be consolidated onto a single .

IN DEPTH:

If all appliances are based on the same operating system, it is possible to consolidate them using intelligent network adapters that can distribute and share data between multiple . Such solutions exist today.

However, if the appliances are based on different operating systems or expect to have full control over available hardware resources, can be used. A number of solutions are possible depending on data sharing and distribution needs. The following describes various consolidation approaches based on VMware.