Virus Checker
I remember years ago VMWare were talking about embedding a virus checker in the hypervisor to scan guests in real-time.
I guess they couldn't keep the performance of that approach.
VMware has shown off a working prototype of “Project Goldilocks”, its long-hinted-at plan to develop a new approach to security. The new idea is inspired by the NSX network virtualisation product's ability to create network “microsegments”, isolated virtual networks walled off from the rest of the network in a “least privilege …
Or maybe that most servers don't need virus checking because they only allow admin logins so there's no way for users to deliver viruses to them so the utility of a virus checker that only works for VM guests is somewhat limit.
It could be a win for a VDI server though, as there's no way a virus checker running on the hypervisor could be slower than running one in each of a thousand VMs.
Especially if vendors get on board and ship apps complete with "birth certificate" (or VMware builds them and allows you to download them) that you could import, so very little post hoc adjustment would need to be made.
The best part is that you could integrate the updating of VMware's expected behavior with updating the documentation, so you would have documentation that actually represents the running state of an application/environment, instead of just what it was (hopefully) like when it was rolled out. And if someone didn't follow proper procedure when making a change, it would quickly become apparent from the alerts VMware would pop.
It could even be used for discovery, i.e. if you need to map out the data flows of an application that has no documentation and no one left at the company who knows anything about it. Just look at the alerts VMware pops up, and keep adding them until it runs without generating new ones, and you'll at least have a pretty good idea of what talks to what during any phase you tested against. Since it would come for 'free' once you have this, it would save you a ton of money versus the very expensive software you have to buy that would produce the exact same output.