VMware shares secrets in security drive

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The vendor is also making some progress toward embedding its own security solutions within future versions of its products.

Mukil Kesavan, a VMware intern studying at the University of Rochester, demonstrated his research into the creation of a host-based antivirus scanning solution for virtualized servers at the conference. Such a solution would enable people to pay for a single antivirus solution across a box running multiple virtual servers, rather than having to buy an antivirus solution for each virtual machine.

VMware is also working on integrating the memory firewall technologies it gained via the acquisition of Determina in early August.

Determina's software protects a system from buffer overflow attacks, while still allowing the system to run at high speeds. It also developed "hot-patching" technology--which allows servers to be patched on the fly, while they are still running.

"I thought they were both cool technologies and we are looking forward to trying to combine them with what VMware does," Rosenblum said. "At a high level it would be nice to have a box in (VMware management console) V-Center that you would tick to run extra security features. It would be an option--you might run slightly slower but it protects you against attack."

In his address to the VMworld conference, Pat Gelsinger, Intel senior vice president, said security is one of the main challenges of virtualization--as many customers won't deploy virtual machines until the industry can offer quality of service around them.

"As virtual machines get more and more popular, new attacks and security threats will emerge," he said.

The risk with virtual machines, Gelsinger added, is that "10 points of failure now become one."

Brett Winterford of ZDNet Australia reported from Sydney.