The InfoWorld SAN and NAS virtualization primer

moncler outlet online In just a few short years, storage virtualization, also known as block virtualization, has proven its worth in the large enterprise and traveled moncler coats cheap that well worn path from pricey boutique solution to affordable commodity. moncler jackets for women As a standard feature in all but the most modest moncler outlet mid tier storage moncler coats systems, storage virtualization soothes a wide range of storage management woes for small and moncler outlet canada mid size organizations. At the same time, dedicated solutions from top tier vendors deliver the greatest ROI to large shops managing large SANs with intense data availability requirements.

moncler moncler chicago sale outlet Storage virtualization creates an abstraction layer womens moncler jackets between host and physical storage that masks the idiosyncrasies of individual storage devices. When implemented in a SAN, it provides a single management point for all block level storage. To put it simply, storage moncler jackets virtualization pools physical storage from multiple, heterogeneous network storage devices and moncler outlet online presents a set of virtual storage volumes for hosts to use.

monlcer down jackets [ Get the full scoop on doing storage virtualization right in the InfoWorld Virtualization Deep Dive PDF special report. Better manage your company virtualization with our Virtualization Report newsletter. ]

cheap moncler jackets In addition to creating storage pools moncler outlets usa composed of physical disks from different arrays, storage virtualization provides a wide range moncler jackets cheap of services, delivered in Cheap Moncler a consistent way. These stretch from basic volume management, including LUN (logical unit number) masking, concatenation, and volume grouping and striping, to thin provisioning, automatic volume expansion, automated data migration, and data protection and disaster recovery functionality, including snapshots and moncler jacket online mirroring.

cheap moncler sale In short, virtualization solutions can be used as a central control point for enforcing storage management policies and achieving higher SLAs.

moncler outlet store Perhaps the most important service enabled by block level virtualization is nondisruptive data migration. For large organizations, moving data is a near constant fact of life. As old equipment comes off lease moncler outlet uk and new gear is brought online, storage virtualization enables the migration of block level data from discount moncler outlet one device to another without an outage. Storage administrators are free to perform routine maintenance or replace aging moncler jackets men arrays without interfering with applications and users, and production systems keep chugging along.

moncler outlet sale Virtualization can also help you achieve better storage utilization and faster provisioning. The laborious processes moncler jackets outlet online for provisioning LUNs and increasing capacity are greatly simplified even automated through virtualization. When provisioning takes 30 minutes instead of six hours and capacity can be reallocated almost on the fly, you can make much more efficient use of storage hardware. Some shops have increased their storage utilization from between 25 and 50 percent to moncler coats outlet more than 75 percent using storage virtualization technology.

buy moncler jackets moncler outlet online store Four architectural approaches In a virtualized moncler jackets on sale SAN fabric, there are four ways to deliver storage virtualization services: in band appliances, out cheap moncler jackets of band appliances, a hybrid approach called split path virtualization architecture, and controller based virtualization. Regardless of architecture, all storage virtualization solutions must do three essential things: maintain a map of virtual disks and physical storage, as well as other configuration metadata; execute Moncler Factory Outlet commands for configuration changes and storage management tasks; and transmit data between hosts and storage.

cheap moncler The four architectures differ in the moncler coats for men way they handle these three separate paths or buy moncler jackets toronto streams the metadata, control, and data paths in the I/O fabric. The differences hold implications for performance and scalability. An in band moncler outlet location appliance processes the metadata, control, and data path information all in a single device. In other words, the metadata management and control functions share the data path. This represents a potential bottleneck in a busy SAN, because all host requests must flow through a single control point.

moncler outlet In band appliance vendors have addressed this potential scalability issue by adding advanced clustering and caching capabilities to their products. Many of these vendors can point to large enterprise SAN deployments that showcase cheap moncler coats for women their solution scalability and performance. Examples https://www.thebeastmark.com of the in band moncler outlet woodbury approach include DataCore SANsymphony, FalconStor IPStor, and IBM SAN Volume Controller.

cheap moncler outlet An out of band appliance pulls the metadata management and control operations out of the data path, offloading these to a Official Moncler Outlet separate compute engine. The hitch is that software agents must be installed on each host. The job of the agent is to pluck the metadata and control requests from the data stream and cheap moncler jackets outlet forward them cheap moncler jackets wholesale to the out of band appliance for processing, freeing the host to moncler coats for kids focus exclusively on transferring data to and from storage. The sole provider of an out of band appliance is LSI Logic, whose StoreAge product can be adapted to both out of band or split path usage.

moncler sale A split path system leverages the port level processing capabilities of moncler jacket outlet an intelligent switch to offload the metadata and control information from the data path. Unlike an out of moncler jackets mens band appliance, in which the paths are split at the host, split path systems split moncler jackets kids the data moncler outlet kids and the control paths moncler coats for cheap in the network at the intelligent device. Split path systems forward the metadata and control information to an out of band compute engine for processing and pass the data path information on to the cheap moncler storage device. Thus, split path systems eliminate the need for host level agents. Typically, split path virtualization software will run in an intelligent switch or a purpose built appliance. Providers of split path virtualization controllers are EMC (Invista), moncler jackets toronto Incipient, and LSI Logic moncler jackets canada (StoreAge SVM).

moncler mens jackets Array controllers have been the most common layer where virtualization services have been deployed. However, controllers typically have virtualized only the physical disks internal to the storage system. This is changing, moncler coats sale though. A twist on the old approach is to deploy the virtualization intelligence on a controller that can virtualize both internal and external storage. Like the in band appliance approach, the controller processes all three paths: data, control, and metadata. The primary example of this new style of controller moncler coats for women based virtualization is the Hitachi Universal Storage Platform.

cheap moncler coats Read more about how to deploy storage virtualization in InfoWorld free PDF report, Virtualization Deep Dive, including:.