Managing virtual server environments topped the list of IT management concerns at a recent conference, while adopting best practices failed to resonate with as many respondents.

Three-quarters of 100 network and systems administrators surveyed this fall at Interop New York said virtualization management is important to their operations, and close to 40% of those respondents qualified managing virtual servers as very important. In addition, more than 80% indicated they already have tools in place (35%) or plan to implement such technology by next year (48%).

"The rapid pace of virtualization adoption has actually left some traditional management vendors behind. It's early days for supporting tools and technologies, and IT organizations need to take this into consideration as they evaluate solutions today," said David Link, CEO and founder of ScienceLogic. ScienceLogic, a maker of network, systems and application-monitoring software, conducted the survey during the October conference and released the findings this week.

Another area of importance to IT managers is security information management, or SIM. More than 80% of those polled at Interop said that SIM technology is important. One-third have the products in place, while another 50% intend to deploy SIM tools in the coming year.

IT managers also have dashboards on their radar for the coming months. According to the survey, 63% said dashboards and operational business intelligence are important to their organizations. Twenty-two percent have dashboard technology in place, but more than 53% reported they intend to deploy the tools in the next year. Another hot topic for IT managers is IT asset management and inventory. More than 80% surveyed said it is important to their operations, with more than one-third already using such technology and more 50% planning to do so in the next 12 months.

On the downside, the topic of process frameworks, such as IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) and configuration-management databases (CMDB), didn't resonate as much with survey respondents. Sixty percent of respondents said ITIL and CDMB projects were of middle to low importance, and although 38% plan to implement some sort of solution in the next year, close to 50% had no plans. About 14% had tools already in place to support such IT initiatives, despite the fact that "improving IT service levels" ranked as the top challenge facing IT departments today among survey respondents.

Also, IPv6 ranked as a middle to low priority for almost three-quarters of survey respondents, and only 8% already had tools in place to address the upgrade to IPv4, the Internet's primary protocol.