As the need for storage space grows, companies are increasingly looking at virtual storage solutions to satisfy their needs. These kinds of solutions make use of a technology referred to as virtualization to abstract and pool equipment resources to create scalable storage architectures that become more flexible and easier to manage than traditional hardware-based systems.
An example of a virtual storage area is block-level virtualization, which in turn consolidates a lot of physical disks to present them to applications like a single logical device. This overcomes the most size limits of person devices with out demanding that applications implement any kind of intelligence managing virtual storage in their gain access to.
Another sort of virtual storage area is data-based, which roadmaps the characteristics associated with an emulated unit — claim, a video tape drive — over a different physical device — such as a storage subsystem — and then has that to the application. The server that stores or retrieves the results is aware of the mapping, but it does not need to understand the details of the underlying system.
Tip 1: When choosing a virtual storage answer, look for features that will lessen storage requirements such as deduplication. This will minimize storage requirements, that may significantly lower the price of storing info on a SAN.
When handling virtual storage area, be sure to consider the amount of band width that will be necessary to transport the metadata that describes the virtualized storage devices. This is an important load that may cause performance issues about the host computers, particularly if the storage products are oversubscribed. Also, make sure to plan for an adequate number of owners to support the entire capacity in the virtual safe-keeping system.