Application-oriented storage virtualization today

In the last two years when virtualization technology has become the focus of both manufacturers and users, we suddenly find that in the storage industry, the sound of storage virtualization is fading. Why is storage virtualization running counter to other virtualization technologies? In the case of HDS China Solutions and professional Services director Chen, this is because storage virtualization is more mature than other virtualization technologies, such as server virtualization, and three implementations of storage virtualization that have been debated years ago, although there is now no uniform standard, But there is no doubt that the virtualization technology based on the storage itself is already accepted by most users. While server virtualization is still talking about technological breakthroughs, storage virtualization has been an inevitable option for enterprise-class users to implement tiered storage and reduce total cost of ownership (TCO).

As the global economic crisis continues to spread today, not only to face the pressure to reduce it costs, but also to address the growing number of data, from these points is not difficult to see how important the data to the business. Management costs are rising as storage networks become increasingly complex. How to solve these problems under internal and internal difficulties? Storage virtualization technology can undoubtedly help users build highly cost-effective storage systems. Leverage storage virtualization technology to fully reduce initial procurement costs and ongoing costs, achieve lower total cost of ownership (TCO), and increase ROI. With virtualization, you can significantly increase average storage utilization, as there is no longer a decentralized way to procure, manage, and configure storage, and to achieve peak capacity. Businesses can reduce wasteful storage costs, which are equivalent to the storage capacity that is shelved in the IT environment.

Back to what we said earlier, the three kinds of implementations that initially store virtualization are competing. In today's view, the implementation of host and network for a variety of reasons has been gradually marginalized, and HDS-represented based on storage virtualization has become the user's preferred. In Chen's view, today's storage vendors should pay more attention to not the implementation of it technology, but from the perspective of customer application, users need a flexible application of the architecture. Simply put, today's storage virtualization needs to be more about how to help users simplify storage management to reduce total cost of ownership.

Storage-based virtualization implementation approach

HDS implements storage virtualization by providing support in the storage controller. This approach provides the simplest but most stable way to implement virtualization for today's heterogeneous storage environments. The virtualization of the controller enables enterprise users to manage their existing heterogeneous, multi-vendor storage assets as a single storage pool through a single panel. Virtualization reduces overall cost, including hardware costs, SAN infrastructure costs, and environmental costs by providing a single management interface for all virtualized storage hardware and extending the life of all assets.

HDS's Storage virtualization architecture