New research finds that 25% of all physical servers -- and 30% of all virtual servers -- are comatose. These are systems that have no activity in the last six months.
The problem with comatose, or zombie, physical servers is well known. Past studies have routinely put the number of undead enterprise physical servers in the 20% to 30% range. But this latest research looked at virtual servers as well, and they may represent a significant cost to IT departments.
That's because users may be paying licensing fees on their virtual servers, as well as on the software they support, said the researchers.
Comatose servers, both virtual and physical, may also represent "an unappreciated security risk" because they aren't patched and maintained, according to the research paper by Jonathan Koomey, a research fellow at Stanford University, and Jon Taylor, a partner at the Athensis Group, a consulting firm.
The Zombie Apocalypse may not take the form you've been expecting...
(Score: 2, Informative) by Weasley on Saturday May 13 2017, @10:06PM
Zombie is a word used to mean a hijacked computer used in a botnet. That headline is a bit deceptive.