Networked storage virtualization and green storage are indispensable

The boom of virtualization technology swept through the IT industry in the 2007. There is no doubt that the rapid development of server virtualization has also driven the process of storage virtualization. According to the definition given by IDC, virtualization is moving from 1.0 times to 2.0 times. The mobility of data and applications is a typical feature of Virtualization 2.0.

Storage virtualization technology is divided into two main camps: one side is committed to the development of network-based storage virtualization technology, on behalf of the manufacturers have IBM and EMC, the other is dedicated to storage-controller storage virtualization technology, on behalf of manufacturers have HDS and HP. Both storage virtualization technologies are unique and can coexist for a considerable amount of time. Recently, IBM released the latest version of the virtualization Products Svc 4.2.1, its performance than the previous generation of products increased by 75%. IBM launched its first version of SVC in 2003, and in the 4 years since then, IBM has made several upgrades to SVC, with 10,000 sets of SVC currently in the global market. HDS's storage virtualization products are unique, and its flagship USP V delivers 3 levels of storage virtualization, supports 247PB of storage capacity, and its external storage is 5 times times more virtualized than previous generations.

The benefits of storage virtualization are obvious, such as the integration of storage systems, increased utilization of storage space, simplified management of systems, and protection of existing investments. More and more vendors are actively engaged in the field of storage virtualization, such as data replication, automated thin configuration technology also used virtualization technology. Virtualization is not a separate product, but a basic function of the storage system. It is very effective for consolidating heterogeneous storage environment and reducing the total cost of ownership of the system.

In addition, the storage virtualization technology and now the whole society to promote green energy conservation is also inextricably linked. A study by IDC shows that the total number of global digital information will increase 6 times times from 2006 to 2010. The 2007 has seen a phenomenon in which the total amount of information exceeds existing storage capacity. Faced with the rapid growth of business and data volume, enterprise users continue to increase IT equipment to meet user requirements for performance, storage space and availability, but also have to face limited data center space, increasing energy costs and other challenges. According to the APC study, the energy consumption of servers and storage devices accounted for about 50% of the energy consumption of the whole data center equipment. How should storage devices save energy and reduce consumption? In addition to the use of more energy-efficient, environmentally friendly materials, such as virtualization and other related technologies can be more efficient use of servers and storage systems, the integration of physical devices into a logical storage pool, thereby reducing the enterprise needs of physical servers and storage systems, and correspondingly reduce the power requirements. Some experts point out that the most efficient storage is green storage, and virtualization is a tool to improve the efficiency of the use of equipment.

There are many ways to save energy for storage, such as storage resource consolidation, storage virtualization, automated compact configuration, data deduplication, information lifecycle management, and large-scale, inactive disk array storage (MAID) technology. In the 2007, new technologies such as automatic compact configuration, duplicate data deletion and maid were widely concerned by users. Duplicate data removal technology can effectively clean up a large amount of redundant data on a disk, allowing users to store more backup data on a specific set of disks, and prolong the storage time of data on the backup disk, thereby further reducing the cost of power and cooling in the data center. Currently, data deduplication has been widely used in virtualized tape libraries and backup-to-disk systems. In addition, companies like HDS, HP, 3PAR, and so on, have launched a storage system with an automated, streamlined configuration that allocates only the logical capacity that the application expects when creating volumes or LUNs, so that multiple volumes or LUNs can flexibly share the same free storage pool, resulting in significantly increased utilization of storage space, This delays the purchase of more storage devices and saves resources.