Storage Virtualization

According to Wikipedia, Storage virtualization refers to the process of abstracting logical storage from physical storage. The term is today used to describe this abstraction at any layer in the storage software and hardware stack.

But in more understandable language, storage virtualization means taking the chains off storage and allowing it to meet the needs of a company that has created virtualized servers and now recongnizes that the new bottle neck they created is storage.

Yesterday NavigateStorage, my company founded in 1999, organized a webex for just such a company. They had successfully installed VMware and had created a couple dozen virtual servers and suddenly found that their storage consumption was far out stripping their installed capacity. Knowing that they needed more they contacted us and asked for help. The company felt that they needed about 6TB immediately and would probably grow to about 10TB over the next year or two.

The solution we proposed was a storage array, certified by VMware and designed to allow virtualization. The cost was $17,000 including 10 - 1TB drives, 5 empty slots for growth, unlimited telephone support and 3 years of next business day service. And more importantly it was designed with a GUI that made the process easy and affordable. Our solution basically presented a "pool of storage" to the GUI and permitted them to intelligently use the storage to meet the needs - both the known needs, as well as, the unknown needs. For example in a true virtualized environment the user could:

* Truly optimize storage utilization
* Create volumes that can include drives of dissimilar sizes
* Support multiple RAID levels on a single drive
* Support RAID migration and drive roaming

The solution we presented, a family of solutions really, was specifically designed as simple to use, cost-effective storage for business environments, and to complement leading applications such as VMware:
• As storage requirements grow in future years, the array provides an extremely cost effective growth path that leverages a customer’s investment throughout the lifecycle of the product.
• A key market differentiator of the solution is the systems 10GbE high performance architecture, which enables either 8 1GbE ports or a true 10GbE interface in a single storage appliance. And you can migrate at your own pace.
• Real time volume expansion, along with virtualized storage, simplifies the allocation of storage as new virtual machines are brought on line.

"Virtualized servers create a rational consolidation point for early adoption of 10GbE iSCSI SANS since they provide good economic leverage and they can take advantage of the increased bandwidth."

If you would like to also see this informative storage virtualization webex please let us know.