What Is Storage Virtualization?

The most popular understanding of Storage Virtualization is the abstraction of storage hardware resources. By integrating one (or more) target services or functions with other additional functions, a unified and comprehensive functional service is provided. Typical virtualization includes the following situations: shielding the complexity of the system, adding or integrating new functions, simulating, integrating or decomposing existing service functions, etc. Virtualization is performed on one or more entities, and these entities are used to provide storage resources or services.

There is a story circulating in the field of virtualization: a good virtualization solution is like traveling through a

Virtualize storage resources into a "

SAN is another design idea put forward by computer workers in order to optimize DAS. It does not try to completely decouple application services from storage services. Instead, it hopes that servers and storage devices can achieve high speed through a dedicated optical fiber network. interconnection. As shown in Figure 1, a SAN system usually consists of server connection devices, storage network connection devices, storage devices, and management software. The storage network connection devices can be subdivided into Fibre Channel hubs, Fibre Channel switches, and storage routers. device.

Since the beginning of this century, storage virtualization technology has undergone more than a decade of technological evolution and market tests. What has changed is not only the technology itself, but also the actual application needs of users. The main purpose of the early storage virtualization technology is to help users pool and integrate heterogeneous storage resources, improve the use and management efficiency, and reduce TCO reasonably. In recent years, SAN-based storage virtualization technology has been increasingly applied to the business of effectively improving core production systems.

First, plan your storage virtualization strategy

A good storage virtualization strategy will get more results with less effort, so as a storage manager, you must first formulate a good storage virtualization strategy, such as whether you need to consider the need for a virtualization strategy? What storage resources does the enterprise have before implementing virtualization After implementing virtualization, what resources does an enterprise need? After implementing virtualization, how does an enterprise manage daily backups, data protection, archiving, and

According to statistics, the annual growth rate of stored data amounts to 50% to 60%. Facing new applications and increasing storage capacity, enterprise users need to borrow

The emergence of virtualization technology has greatly enhanced the productivity of enterprises, increased the utilization ratio of assets, and effectively managed the operating environment of enterprises. Different virtualization technologies provide users with different aspects of support.

Just as the boundaries between different categories of virtual storage are becoming increasingly blurred, so is the possibility of increasingly blurred lines between storage virtualization and server virtualization. In addition to Microsoft's efforts through Windows Storage Server 2003, NetApp also added virtualization performance to the V series (formerly Filer series) arrays in the Data ONTAP operating system.

Virtualization software is becoming more dynamic and more complete, and its development direction is more like a comprehensive operating system. People in the industry have fully realized that the debate about virtualization through switches, disk arrays, or application devices is meaningless. Future virtualization should be implemented through these technologies and then combined by a major virtualization layer. .

The virtualized operating system of the future should be a highly distributed, enterprise-level operating system. If we look further, virtualization may also evolve into an element of a distributed operating system that includes servers, networks, and storage devices, and all three types of virtualization are receiving attention. However, any of these three types of virtualization can cause trouble. For example, with server virtualization, some initial server virtualization projects had problems with storage addresses and other advanced features in storage management. For virtualization to work properly, server virtualization must improve virtual storage performance, or it will become an obstacle.

Similarly, network devices or storage switches can use a variety of intelligent packet inspection technologies to understand the nature of the data being migrated and make decisions on how to effectively transfer or store them. Although the network can recognize that a data stream is actually a JPEG file, there is no way to distinguish between X-rays and erotic photos. In addition, the virtual storage or virtual server pool can only go so far as to figure out what the data is doing-for example, when other processes are sleeping, the server pool may choose to assign an extra process to a certain process, but it However, it is impossible to make a basic distinction between the running of the payroll process and the DOS attack (denial of server attack) against the server.

Therefore, industry experts believe that it is important to consider virtualization in three areas, but also integrate management tools to understand the needs of the application layer, and make virtualization decisions based on the situation. But there is still a long way to go to realize such a dream.

Storage virtualization technology is still a relatively new technology. Storage virtualization is not a panacea. Don't keep up with current resources and existing storage technologies. Enterprise storage managers need to use their existing storage. Resources, storage technologies, and storage virtualization are related, and it's important to find the storage strategy that works best for your business.

Although storage virtualization technology is not necessarily suitable for all different data types and systems in the end, storage virtualization is the general trend. What enterprises need to do and consider is to adopt storage virtualization strategies to solve specific problems, thereby improving the efficiency of enterprise storage systems.

What are the hottest technologies and trends related to storage virtualization? According to Ferraro of F5, deduplication and cloud storage are two objects of concern. "As data continues to grow rapidly, many companies are constantly looking for ways to further reduce storage costs. Storage virtualization is one of the key factors for these technologies, because it can eliminate the main obstacles to the application of these technologies. Storage virtualization can be automated "Which data fits into the process of determining which storage type, and it can be migrated according to predefined policies without disrupting users and applications."

According to Albatal, some interesting new technology trends include homogeneous data protection services in heterogeneous virtual storage environments, SSD applications that improve SAN (Storage Area Network) performance, and automated on-storage storage based on QoS (Quality of Service) requirements. Architectural data migration. He said: "Storage virtualization can be widely used as a best practice in the IT world. Virtualized SANs will become the de facto standard for storage environment deployment and management." Albatal said SMEs are expected to see more heterogeneity. Storage virtualization solutions, as well as support for new protocols, such as Fibre Channel Ethernet--providing high-performance services over IP.

In Ramanathan's view, many people will focus on where virtualization is deployed-host-based, network-based or storage-based. "All of these options have their own advantages and disadvantages. Many people are emphasizing storage virtualization to consolidate heterogeneous storage systems, consolidating these systems into a common storage pool and adopting common management and protection. Storage virtualization The goal of virtualization is to give you the ability to choose storage arrays from different vendors and provide you with various enterprise-level features such as dynamic configuration and dynamic data migration. " ^[6]