By: Julia Aidan
Submitted: 2009-09-27 23:07:33 | Word Count: 517
Initially, managing storage capacity of disk was an easy task. The computer professionals got bigger disk drives if higher storage was required. Soon when it was realized that there is increase in data storage, the computer experts attached additional disk drives for extra data storage. Immediately, computer professionals realized that it became lengthy and difficult process to find the saved information. Thus, to manage this situation, the computer experts developed RAID, network attached storage and storage area networks. But even then, it became quite difficult to handle and organize thousands of disk drives.
At this point the experts felt the need of Storage Virtualization. Storage Virtualization works as a connect the storage system and servers by putting a new layer of software and/or hardware in-between the two. This helped the applications to track the data easily whether it is stored in any disk drive, partitions or storage sub-systems. This further aided the professionals to know, handle and offer the dispersed storage just like a sole, combined resource. Moreover, the availability was considerably improved with storage virtualization because the applications are not limited to particular storage resources and therefore protected from interruptions. Storage Virtualization even improves the storage capacity considerably and that too automatically, hence decreasing manual provision. It also helped to get the updates easily and instantly maintaining the performance pf the applications as well as reducing the downtime.
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Technology: Storage Virtualization works as a main interface between the storage and servers since it is a transitional layer. From the server end, the virtualization is regarded to be single storage devices and the storage device considers the Virtualization to be a single server. Hence, this helps to categorize the storage systems easily and even devices from number of sources in layers of storage.
The user can swap the disk or tape drives easily as the layer protects the applications and servers from any change to the storage devices . At the storage virtualization layer, the information copying services are even proficiently organized. During disasters, data recovery process becomes easier due to storage virtualization. As the information can be moved at users choice, the information that is not used regularly or any obsolete information can be moved to low-cost storage devices.
There are three methods by which the storage virtualization can be arranged:
- Host Based: The old device drivers handle the physical drives whereas the software that is above the device driver stops I/O requests, sees the metadata and diverts I/O.
- Storage Device based: In this method, the storage virtualization is made into storage fabric. In this type of arrangement, the system provides repitition and relocation services across different controllers.
- Network based: Here the storage virtualization is arranged to form a network based device. This arrangement normally uses Fiber Channel Networks connected as a SAN.
The computer experts consider all three set-ups to work efficiently. Though, the Virtualization supports cross-vendor storage functioning, aiding you to operate in several vendor sources. But the fact is most of the set-ups clutch you in a definite source.
