What is the consequence of VM sprawl?

VM sprawl refers to the uncontrolled proliferation of virtual machines within a virtualized environment. As organizations create and deploy more virtual machines, they may lose track of how many have been provisioned, leading to potential over-provisioning or under-utilization of resources. This lack of oversight can cause various challenges, including increased costs, difficulties in management, and potential performance issues as resources become constrained.

When virtual machines are deployed without proper oversight, they can consume significant storage, CPU, and memory resources, leading to inefficiencies in resource allocation and potential degradation of performance for all virtual machines running on the host. Proper governance and policies regarding the deployment and management of virtual machines are essential to mitigate the risks associated with VM sprawl.

In contrast, increased security, improved application performance, and better resource management are outcomes generally associated with well-governed and strategically managed virtual environments rather than uncontrolled expansion of virtual machines.