VMware Agrees to Acquire Virsto to facilitate Software-led Infrastructure

From Wikibon

VMware has agreed to acquire Virsto, and has estimated that the acquisition will be complete by the end of first quarter 2013. Virsto provides a virtualization storage layer below the VMware Hypervisor for Servers (Virsto Storage Hypervisor) to enable software-led (defined) storage for enterprises and cloud. Virsto (like hybrid providers like Tintrí) has its own file system which allows a one-to-one connection between VM IO queues and the target storage object. The main benefit is to reduce the IO latency and improve bandwidth for IO that has gone through the VM "IO blender".

Virsto also provides storage functions such as snapshots, Clones & Thin Provisioning to be provided as system-wide software functions, rather than storage array functions. Benefit is to allow potential of end-to-end performance information to be known to vSphere for server, network & storage, where the storage is DAS, JBOD or storage array.

One of the factors driving VMware to acquire Virsto was the announcement by Microsoft of Storage Spaces as a component of Windows 2012. VMware aiming to provide the same type of software-led services that Storage Spaces provides. This is a move away from the complex APIs that have previously been provided to help integrate storage arrays with VMware. This move is especially important for entry level SMB customers and their resellers, who will be able to provide the same function as storage arrays using lower cost DAS and JBOD.

Action Item: VMware users should look forward to VMware integrating Virsto functionality quickly into its stack, and providing an important softare-led storage functions on the road to software-led infrastructure.

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