Four business scenarios illustrate how small and midsize companies can reduce costs, improve disaster recovery and more via storage virtualization.

Howard Marks, Network Computing Blogger

November 29, 2012

4 Min Read

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Storage Virtualization Gets Real

Storage Virtualization Gets Real

Storage virtualization can deliver benefits such as better utilization of existing storage, easier provisioning, improved performance of storage systems and applications, and lower-cost disaster recovery. But many different technologies fall under the "storage virtualization" umbrella. We'll use a fictional company to illustrate how small and midsize businesses might craft a storage virtualization strategy that meets different business needs and balances cost and performance trade-offs.

In particular, we'll look at using cloud gateways for faster file services and host-based replication for disaster recovery. We'll show how hybrid storage that combines flash storage and traditional spinning disks can deliver faster performance while controlling costs, but that doing so means sorting through several possible approaches. And last, we'll show how server-side caching done right can improve virtual desktop performance.

In our scenario, a new management group has taken over Acme Inc., a manufacturer of novelties and toys. Over the past several years, Acme has made limited investments in its IT infrastructure as a result of the economic downturn. The company's new CIO believes in the concept behind a software-defined data center, in which software performs functions such as networking and storage virtualization that have in the past been performed by dedicated hardware. He has asked his infrastructure group to virtualize as much new infrastructure as possible -- including the storage.

One of the first storage applications to be virtualized at Acme was file services. Before the upgrade, Acme had traditional disk-based network-attached storage systems in its Los Angeles design and distribution center, and in its three sales offices across the country. Acme has millions of CAD and graphics files in its archive of product designs and marketing materials, and the company's designers are often kept waiting as the NAS systems struggle to deliver these large files.

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Acme also struggled with transporting files from location to location. Most of the time, employees sent files via email attachments to co-workers in other offices and to the company's Asian manufacturing partners. This clogged up the Exchange server and backup repositories with multiple copies of files. In addition, employees began bypassing corporate IT, and its security safeguards, by using consumer services such as Dropbox.

Cloud Gateways Speed File Servers

To address these problems, Acme chose a cloud storage service that uses cloud gateways like those from Nasuni and Panzura. These gateways are deployed on premises at Acme's offices, and connect to cloud storage services from providers such as Nirvanix and Amazon's S3. The gateways in each location use local solid-state drives and spinning disks to cache actively accessed data while presenting a single integrated file namespace to the users, regardless of their location. The LA design center will have a higher-end appliance with SSDs to provide the performance the designers need, while the sales offices and manufacturing partners can use less-expensive virtual appliances running under VMware's vSphere to keep costs reasonable.

To read the rest of the article,
Download the December 2012 InformationWeek SMB special issue on storage virtualization

About the Author(s)

Howard Marks

Network Computing Blogger

Howard Marks is founder and chief scientist at Deepstorage LLC, a storage consultancy and independent test lab based in Santa Fe, N.M. and concentrating on storage and data center networking. In more than 25 years of consulting, Marks has designed and implemented storage systems, networks, management systems and Internet strategies at organizations including American Express, J.P. Morgan, Borden Foods, U.S. Tobacco, BBDO Worldwide, Foxwoods Resort Casino and the State University of New York at Purchase. The testing at DeepStorage Labs is informed by that real world experience.

He has been a frequent contributor to Network Computing and InformationWeek since 1999 and a speaker at industry conferences including Comnet, PC Expo, Interop and Microsoft's TechEd since 1990. He is the author of Networking Windows and co-author of Windows NT Unleashed (Sams).

He is co-host, with Ray Lucchesi of the monthly Greybeards on Storage podcast where the voices of experience discuss the latest issues in the storage world with industry leaders.  You can find the podcast at: http://www.deepstorage.net/NEW/GBoS

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