Smart questions about storage virtualization

TalkBack 2 of 2:

« Previous

• Thread View
• Flat View

IBM Missed the Mark

In this article, Ron Riffe from IBM raises the issue that the more important question is "as a customer, what results do you expect to achieve from virtualization?"

Storage Virtualization is all solving business problems and implementing the right solution to do so. Storage Virtualization is a very strategic initiative for a company and has major impact in the initial implementation. Restructuring the SAN, hardware and software acquisitions, re-zoning, new procedures, new methodologies across the enterrprise, and a non-trivial migration to the storage virtualization solution.

This all means that customers want to make sure that they make the right decision to meet their needs both today and moving forward. An in-band solution that works fine with a very small (1 or 2 small arrays) environment could likely provide very different results when adding 4 or 5 arrays of this size, or adding advanced functinality like local or remote replication.

So, saying that architecture does not make a difference is totally wrong. It is all about architecture and building an infrastructure that can carry a company into the future. Providing a solutions that does not locking them into a specific hardware implementation. Not limiting their growth, and providing a solution that is scalable today.

Ron talks about Industry Standard benchmarks. Storage Virtualization is not storage. It is about virtualizing storage. It is about providing capabilities like transparent data movement, both locally and remotely. Where is the measurements that show how an in-band solution impacts a production environment while doing migrations, local copies or remote copies?

Customers want to build an infrastructure that allows them to leverage this advanced functionality with storage virtualization when ever they need or want to, and not be limited by the constraints of the architecture and it's impact on a production environment.

Bottom line, moving to a storage virtualization solution is not an easy thing to do and has a major impact on any IT organization, but there can be real value there. But, making the wrong decision in chosing a solution, and then trying to get off a storage virtualization architecture that doesn't end up meeting your needs is a substantially more difficult and painful thing to do.

This is not a decision that should be made lightly. There are a lot of exciting things happening in the Storage Virtualization space right now that are very much worth considering before making a decision that could cost more in the long run.

Posted by: dyb   Posted on: 06/30/05 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

Alert moderator to an offensive message

Subscribe to this discussion via Email or RSS

SponsoredWhite Papers, Webcasts, and Downloads

• Virtualization: Architectural Considerations And Other Evaluation Criteria VMware Of the many approaches to x86 systems virtualization available in the ... Download Now
• The True Costs of Virtual Server Solutions VMware In an economic environment that is repeatedly heralding the message "do ... Download Now
• Open Standards Technologies Provide the Ingredients for Delivering Security Across the Papa Gino's Enterprise Dell Papa Gino's Holdings Corporation founded by the entrepreneur operates one ... Download Now