Virtualization-based Techniques for Enabling Multi-tenant Management Tools

As service providers strive to improve the quality and efficiency of their IT (information technology) management services, the need to adopt a standard set of tools and processes becomes increasingly important. Deploying multitenant capable tools is a key part of this standardization, since a single instance can be used to manage multiple customer environments, and multi-tenant tools have the potential to significantly reduce service-delivery costs. However, most tools are not designed for multi-tenancy, and providing this support requires extensive re-design and re-implementation. This paper explores the use of virtualization technology to enable multitenancy for systems and network management tools with minimal, if any, changes to the tool software.