Storage virtualization is often the next step for an enterprise that has invested in server virtualization, or it is a project that happens simultaneously with server virtualization. Either way, storage is top priority for any enterprise that considers virtualization as way ahead. This is because it comes with certain obvious benefits. It reduces operational and capital expenditure through consolidation, rapid storage deployment and cost-effective disaster recovery. “While server utilization and consolidation are driving many virtualization projects, improved business continuity is another key benefit,” says Prakash Krishnamoorthy, Country manager, StorageWorks Division of HP India. “Having said that, I would like to stress here that virtualization is not simply a server or storage technology. It is the convergence of servers, storage, networking and applications in a way that fundamentally changes how you use the resources in your entire IT infrastructure,” adds Prakash.

HP’s storage virtualization solutions help enterprises not only cut costs and reduce management complexities but also enable them to respond more quickly to business challenges. In today’s volatile economy, a turn-on-a-dime agility is essential for maintaining competitive advantage. HP’s storage virtualization helps businesses improve time to deployment of new application infrastructure reducing it from months to weeks.

“Simply defined, storage virtualization lets you pool and share storage resources to help you make sure that supply meets business demand,” adds Prakash.

“Virtualization is essentially a task of abstraction, wherein the logical representation of the storage that the user sees, uses and manages is separated from the way it is actually stored in the physical device,” says Sandeep Dutta, Vice-President – Storage, Systems and Technology Group, IBM India/SA.

“As customers traverse the various phases of Virtualization leverage, varying demands and requirements are placed upon the Storage environment. The journey could start with leveraging a connectivity model which is comfortable, such as iSCSI to meet initial requirements for the pilot and light use phases. As more VMs are rolled out, and the implementation moves to the next level of virtualization, customers would need flexible, modular connectivity options,” says Sanjay Lulla, Director, Technology Solutions – India and SAARC, EMC Corporation.

“Virtualization is the hottest technology to make a serious impact in the market. Storage virtualization has been catching on due to the numerous benefits it offers,” says Sanjay Lulla.

• Automation – Saves Time
Many tasks that may be time-consuming can be automated with the help of storage virtualization. Policy-driven virtualization tools obviate the need for people to address each alert or interrupt in the storage business. This, in itself, can have many implications. For instance, it can save cost by reducing the number of IT personnel required.
• Efficient Storage Management
Earlier, multiple storage devices scattered over a network had to be managed independently. But with the advent of storage virtualization, a single storage entity can be managed from a central console.
• Much Better Resource Utilization
Pooling and non-disruptive data migration can dramatically improve capacity utilization. It is estimated that storage virtualization can help improve utilization of available resources by almost up to 50%. This is due to the fact that when all the available storage is pooled, there will be no need to search for free space on disks. Also, space can be allocated as and when needed without the need for estimating how much a given host would require in the future.
• Non-disruptive Data Migration
One key benefit of storage virtualization is the ability to migrate data while maintaining concurrent I/O access. Hence, data migration does not cause any inconvenience or disturbance to other processes that are happening at the same time.
• Disaster Recovery
Virtualization can duplicate important servers and hence this obviates the need to maintain physical duplicates of every piece of hardware as a precautionary measure in case of any disaster.
• Cost Savings
Automation can save cost by reducing the number of IT personnel required.
Utilization of available resources by almost up to 50% is a quick way to lower the total cost of ownership (TCO).
The virtualization engine can use its access pattern information and leverage its online migration features to transparently relocate frequently accessed data to more expensive, high-performance storage and move less frequently accessed data to less expensive storage, bringing true ILM within reach and thus resulting is a cost-efficient storage mechanism.
• Energy Savings

Storage virtualization enables organizations to more effectively manage storage as well as increase storage utilization resulting in significant capacity and cost savings while also addressing critical datacenter energy issues. Thus, storage virtualization supports the Green IT Revolution that is gaining momentum today.

EMC
Advanced storage virtualization functionality, such as virtual provisioning and virtual LUN technology, is supported on EMC Symmetrix, Celerra and CLARiiON storage arrays. EMC provides In-array mobility across tiers and RAID types. This allows Storage to catch up with load balancing technologies provided by the virtual infrastructure. When virtual machines require additional capacity, users easily provide additional capacity (real time and non-disruptive) to their application with EMC metaLUN technology. EMC users have the capability to mix a wider variety of drive types within a single frame-mix SATA, low-power SATA, Fibre Channel, and Flash drives. In-array mobility for EMC customers makes possible the ability to tier and migrate virtual machines non-disruptively, within the system – both between drive types and online.

The resource flexibility to move virtual machines within the array, based on the application performance requirements, and at different time points of the business cycle is mandatory. In the event that a virtual machine becomes less critical, Virtual LUNs can be used to migrate information non-disruptively to a cost-effective tier (between SATA, FC, Flash, low power SATA) of storage online. To achieve end-to-end service levels – Vmotio, DRS and storage –, this can be done manually or through intelligent EMC solutions like FAST – Fully Automated Storage Tiering and Quality of Service Manager.

Array-based virtualization, built upon consolidation, tiering and array-based software functionality will deliver optimal customer value for most use cases. By deploying an array-based virtualization solution, customers can leverage the maturity and proven effectiveness of EMC arrays. Customers can consolidate multiple arrays onto a single EMC frame, and then have a single, effective point of management for virtual LUNs, virtual provisioning and tiering. For customers demanding large-scale consolidation and Clod-ready virtualized storage, we provide the high-end EMC Virtual Matrix approach. This provides customers with the ability to scale out their storage in line with their growth of virtualized servers whilst maintaining both linear performance and management. Our V-Max product, built on this architecture, allows storage engines to be added without compromising performance and functionality while still functioning as a single array or storage pool.

EMC also offers network-based storage virtualization with its Invista software. For customers looking to make ongoing, non-disruptive data moves across a heterogeneous storage footprint, Invista supports all five of the major operating systems and heterogenous storage from various vendors. 

“EMC IT Management solutions help IT operations ensure the availability of critical IT services through visibility and control across the IT infrastructure, including applications, servers, network and storage,” says Sanjay Lulla.

These include EMC Ionix ControlCenter and EMC Inonix (formerly known as EMC Smarts) families, also shift  the burden of managing complexity from users to the system by automating some of the most complex, error-prone and time-consuming tasks.
For example, EMC Ionix ControlCenter Automate Resource Manager lets you meet or exceed time-to-provision service level commitments by fulfilling application requests for storage – quickly and easily. Ionix ControlCenter Automated Resource Manager simplifies storage allocation by enabling efficient, automated policy-based storage provisioning

“Now, you can establish repeatable, auditable provision policies that rapidly identify free storage available from your hosts, host bus adapters (HBAs), ports, arrays, or devices. Streamline the way your organization identifies appropriate storage. Minimize manual errors with automation – and free your personnel to do more strategic tasks,” says Sanjay Lulla.

IBM
The IBM System Storage SAN Volume Controller (SVC) is a storage virtualization system that enables a single point of control for storage resources to help support improved business application availability and greater resource utilization. The objective is to manage storage resources in the clients’ IT infrastructure and to make sure they are used to the advantage of their business – and do it quickly, efficiently, in real time, while avoiding administrative cost. IBM's SVC unlocks the proprietary hold that vendors such as EMC, HP and Hitachi have had on customers for years. With IBM's storage virtualization, customers can choose any EMC, HP, Hitachi or IBM devices.

Another of IBM’s virtualization-related products is the IBM Information Infrastructure, their infrastructure management platform that focusses on storage monitoring, including within its purview other infrastructure elements such as tapes, network fabric and file systems. IBM Information Infrastructure enables virtualization of storage assets as well as the storage networks that connect servers and storage. The infrastructure also includes integrated management tools to manage both the virtual and physical aspects of the infrastructure from a single management point.

The value of a virtualized infrastructure is in the increased flexibility created  by having pools of system resources on which to draw; in the improved access to information afforded by shared infrastructure; and the lower  total  cost  of  ownership  that  comes  with  decreased management  costs;  increased  asset  utilization; and the ability to link infrastructure performance to specific business goals.
Another solution that we offer includes Data  Deduplication  comprehensively  addresses  all  of  the capacity  problems  in  conjunction  with  performance,  security and management  issues. For example, IBM De-duplication Gateway solutions help companies to 1. Simplify and accelerate information protection 2.Help lower operational cost end energy usage and 3. Manage more data with fewer infrastructures.

“IBM’s innovative storage virtualization solutions enable resources that can be allocated and controlled on demand, ensuring maximum service flexibility, performance, and robustness for helping clients store, safeguard, retrieve data and ultimately scale for future growth,” says Sandeep Dutta.

Efficient management of storage infrastructure means ensuring that both from a capacity management and performance management perspective, there is sufficient monitoring tools that help collect relevant data from the storage devices.  It is based on these data informed decisions can be taken which can affect the storage environment, capacity provisioning as well as better governance of data.  Storage solutions that take into consideration the entire IT infrastructure along with the application space will have a better propensity.
The explosion of information can truly become a business opportunity for many organizations. Without a dynamic information infrastructure, many will find themselves facing higher operational costs and greater exposure to business risks as they seek to gain new insights in time to make smarter business decisions.

IBM System Storage solutions can help the users manage the explosion of information by enabling a dynamic information infrastructure – one that not only improves productivity, service delivery, cash flow and governance, but allows organizations to securely store, control, protect, manage, and optimize access to information for new intelligence and business insight.

HP
HP has a wide range of simple, scalable and affordable storage virtualization solutions to address business challenges encountered at every turn. Our network-based virtualization solutions such as StorageWorks SAN Virtualization Services Platform (SVSP) lets enterprises use shared storage systems based on specific needs for performance, capacity, availability and cost-effectiveness. While virtualization improves server utilization, it also depends on shared storage to better meet application requirements. Virtual environments require high levels of data availability plus storage utilization to addresses the ability to scale non-disruptively as businesses evolve. HP’s StorageWorks P4000 G2 SAN solutions are ideally suited to address some of these challenges and deliver real business results.

“HP’s storage virtualization solutions help enterprises not only cut costs and reduce management complexities but also enable them to respond more quickly to business challenges. In today’s volatile economy a turn-on-a-dime agility is essential to maintaining competitive advantage. HP’s storage virtualization helps businesses improve time to deployment of new application infrastructure reducing it from months to weeks,” says Prakash.

“HP’s storage virtualization solutions help enterprises not only cut costs and reduce management complexities but also enable them to respond more quickly to business challenges. In today’s volatile economy, a turn-on-a-dime agility is essential to maintaining competitive advantage. HP’s storage virtualization helps businesses improve time to deployment of new application infrastructure reducing it from months to weeks,” says Prakash.

NetApp
NetApp provides storage virtualization technologies which can significantly reduce the storage required for production, backup, and DR with server virtualization.  NetApp ensures the savings found with server virtualization can be actualized and even enhanced with our storage virtualization technologies. NetApp’s unified storage provides the common shared infrastructure that supports all storage protocol needs.

NetApp provides virtualization capabilities at every level of the storage hierarchy and this capability is built into all NetApp storage platforms. NetApp's Data ONTAP software environment incorporates virtualization technology that simplifies enterprise data management while dramatically reducing TCO. Since Data ONTAP enables a logical presentation of data that is not constrained by physical storage infrastructure, attention can be focussed on critical business applications instead of hardware complexity.
NetApp offers unique advantages for virtual environments, including close relationships with VMware, Microsoft, and Citrix to provide product integration and support for vSphere, Hyper-V, and XenServer, respectively. NetApp Data Motion complements the ability to move virtual machines between servers in these environments, as discussed previously. NetApp deduplication technology and/or NetApp FlexClone can be used to eliminate the redundancy that results from having dozens of copies of the same operating system.

Cisco
Sumit Mukhija, National Sales Manager, Cisco India and SAARC believes that server virtualization will give rise to infrastructure demands on storage area networks (SANs). Cisco supports network-based storage virtualization solutions that will help a wide variety of independent software vendors (ISVs) to jointly address key customer pain points related to storage provisioning, data migration/replication, backup/recovery, disk capacity utilization, and storage management costs.

Finally…
There are many capital and operational expenditure savings, business agility and simplified management benefits to be had through the implementing storage virtualization. Storage virtualization is here for a long haul. And all organizations should be planning to implement it.