Many enterprises are transitioning their data centers to virtual environments, but doing so may have unintended consequences when it comes to complying with various laws and regulations. In this tip, we look at the impact that virtualization has on enterprise compliance programs and provide some advice on how you can design a virtualization strategy that enhances, rather than jeopardizes your organization’s compliance efforts.

The Challenges of Virtualization

In a virtualized environment, operating systems do not run directly on top of physical hardware.  Instead, there is a middle layer, known as the hypervisor, that manages access to the physical hardware.  The hypervisor is responsible for balancing the needs of multiple guest operating systems and presenting each of them with a view of the hardware that imitates the view that the guest operating systems would have of physical hardware.  It’s fair to say that the hypervisor is responsible for ensuring that guest systems are not aware of each other’s presence.