Moderator: Peter Burris
Analyst: David Floyer
Storage remains the wild west in the data center. Over the last number of years, the rate of growth of storage resources has been extraordinary, driven by applications that have a greater thirst for more, larger files and a diversity of performance requirements. Recently storage vendors have been introducing storage virtualization technologies to try and help user organizations gain greater control over how they configure, move, administer and ultimately handle resource utilization of these storage assets.
These technologies ultimately provide three views that lead to distinct and very real benefits:
- A user view that allows individuals and developers to identify the specific storage resources under their control.
- A resource management view that provides a vehicle for mapping resources to capabilities at a delivery level.
- An operational view that effectively handles the ongoing arrangements of one-time resources required to deliver committed services at the storage level.
The benefits of storage virtualization can be significant, dramatically cutting the cost of configuring storage and moving data, simplifying the handling of resource utilization decisions and even addressing accounting questions regarding how much an application, user or group utilizes storage at different performance levels.
However, even as these technologies prove increasingly beneficial and powerful, user organizations must be very careful to note that the front side (services-side) virtualization work is not trivial. Servers, files and other types of resources must be discreetly named and identified so that a robust virtualization set of resources can be defined and administered in an ongoing way.
The metadata associated with establishing these virtualization structures will become a significant source of value to users as well as vendors. Over the next few years, users should begin utilizing virtualization technologies in application domains where the cost of configuration, movement and administration of storage are extremely high. All the while pushing their suppliers to find new and more meaningful ways to simplify and ultimately unify technologies for handling the front side virtualization metadata and resources.
Action Item: User organizations should begin exploiting storage virtualization technologies in those application domains where the cost of storage configuration, movement and administration are very high and represent a serious risk and cost item in application performance. However, as users begin to exploit these technologies, they must always configure a transition plan before configuring their backside (delivery - i.e. devices and infrastructure services) virtualization technology stack.
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