Approaches to storage virtualization

There are basically three different approaches to virtualization of a storage environment. These differ in is located at what level virtualization instance. There are, according to current knowledge of the following approaches:

• Virtualization at the server level (host based)
• SAN-level virtualization (Appliance-based)
• Virtualization on the storage level (array based)

Each version has advantages and disadvantages. The design of virtual storage management based on a screening each of these levels in the company. Only after a detailed analysis and a clear vision can optimize the memory utilization and simplify administration.

Greater efficiency and lower costs are the wishful thinking in storage environments. :rolleyes: The continuing strong growth of data and limited budgets for IT investments lead to dynamically growing storage structures in companies. hard drives , optical discs and tapes are often independent of one another in use. The storage and backup tasks in the past were often solved department far, without a coherent strategy was given by the company. And volumes continue to rise in the coming years. Early reflections are therefore useful to bring together the existing storage capacity and efficiently. Many companies in the IT environment are the face of commonly accepted data growth of 50 to 100 percent per year before the challenge that their capacity is exhausted in optical storage systems and hard drives soon.

The storage virtualization here is a suitable approach to consolidate the storage environment on the one hand and on the other hand, to make sustainable. Foundation for efficient and appropriate allocation of storage is always a critical and thorough self-analysis, an organizational concept and detailed knowledge of technical possibilities. Now it is for storage virtualization is no universal checklist that could proceed after an IT manager to combine the storage structures and to standardize the storage of data. Storage virtualization means that uncoupled the use of computing and storage capacity of the actual hardware. This offers the user a logical view of the physical layer.

The objective of such project is to better use by virtualizing the existing and newly created resources. Each application must be timely access to required infrastructure, while keeping costs in check. The project must also legal requirements regarding the storage of data and documents to be considered. It summarizes the various hardware used for this purpose technologies together into a so-called storage pool. This will consist disk arrays, optical storage systems and tape libraries equal footing. Rules that are defined with storage management tools that support largely automated management of stored data. Of the existing storage units across the data can then categorize easily copy, and move.