Storage Virtualization

By Author: Jamie Hanson
Total Articles: 3495
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In the beginning, handling the disk capacity was quite convenient. The computer professionals got bigger disk drives if more storage was required. Soon when it was realized that there is increase in data storage, the computer experts attached additional disk drives for extra data storage. Soon, computer professionals knew that it became time-consuming and difficult procedure to get the saved information.Network attached storage and storage area networks, RAID was designed by the computer professionals. But also, it became quite difficult to manage and organize thousands of disk drives.

At this point the experts felt the need of Storage Virtualization. Storage Virtualization performs as a relate the storage system and servers by adding a new layer of software and/or hardware in-between the two. This helped the applications to track the data easily whether it is stored in any disk drive, partitions or storage sub-systems. This further assisted the professionals to know, manage and provide the distributed storage just like a sole, united resource. Also there was increased availability due to Storage Virtualization since ...
... the applications did not have resource restriction which thus protected it from any sort of disturbances. Storage Virtualization also boosts the storage capacity significantly and that too automatically, thereby decreasing manual provision. These can be updated instantly without disturbing the functionality of the applications, and this reduced the downtime.

Technology: Storage Virtualization acts as a main interface between the storage and servers because it is a transitional layer. From the server end, the virtualization is regarded to be single storage devices and the storage device considers the Virtualization to be a single server. Thus, this helps to group the storage systems convininetly and also devices from many sources in layers of storage.

It is possible for the user to exchange the tape or disk drives conveniently and this happens due to the fact that the applications and servers are protected from any change to storage device by the layer . At the storage virtualization layer, the information copying services are also effectively organized. During disasters, data recovery process becomes easier due to storage virtualization. As the information can be moved at users choice, the information that is not used regularly or any obsolete information can be moved to low-cost storage devices.

There are three methods by which the storage virtualization can be arranged:

- Host Based: The old device drivers maintain the physical drives and the software that is above the device driver stops I/O commands, checks the metadata and diverts I/O.

- Storage Device based: In this method, the storage virtualization is made into storage fabric. In this type of arrangement, the system provides repitition and relocation services through different controllers.

- Network based: Here the storage virtualization is arranged to form a network based device. This arrangement normally uses Fiber Channel Networks linked as a SAN.

The computer experts consider all three set-ups to work efficiently. Though, the Virtualization supports cross-vendor storage functioning, assisting you to handle in many vendor sources. However, you are held in particular source by majority of arrangements.

Know more about iscsi storage software and server virtualization at starwindsoftware.com