 Storage
virtualisation is the aggregation of multiple physical
storage devices, of various interface protocols, into
a single virtual What IS storage pool. From this pool
virtual storage volumes can be provisioned as required,
appearing as locally attached logical devices to their
host server. An advanced virtualisation solution provides
IT administrators the freedom of choice to provision the
available storage in the virtual pool as SAN and/or NAS
volumes as necessary.
In plain English: when storage,
from the virtual pool, is allocated to an application
server by an administrator at a centralised console,
the server is forced into thinking that an actual SCSI
storage device has been physically attached. And that’s
how it appears on the list of devices attached to the
server—for example, as a new F or G drive in Microsoft
Windows servers, or a newly mountable physical device
in UNIX, Linux, or Solaris.
The value of virtualisation
In addition to unifying management of SAN and NAS resources,
an advanced storage virtualisation solution will form
an enterprise storage infrastructure, offering maximum
freedom of choice in all areas.
The solution should be based on
open standards, making it independent of device vendors
and interfaces, Storage connectivity protocols and operating
system (OS) platforms.
Virtualisation is most powerful
when implemented in conjunction with advanced storage
management features, such as high availability, active–active
failover, snapshot, mirroring, replication and accelerated
backup and recovery.
Application optimisation capabilities
can also be utilised, such as the ability to offload
host server tasks like replication and backup.
Finally, the solution should be
reliable, scalable, secure, easy to deploy and use,
as well as being cost-effective.
A virtualisation solution can drastically
improve the efficiency with which data and storage are
managed.
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