Jon Toigo excerpt on storage virtualization

On to a New Decade

In 2010, vendor marketing campaigns will ramp up with the usual hype.
By Jon William Toigo - Feb 2010
http://esj.com/Articles/2010/02/02/Storage-New-Decade.aspx?Page=1

Interestingly, server virtualization has breathed new life into storage virtualization -- resurrecting the technology from the rubble of the late 1990s tech industry meltdown and driving it into the mainstream.

Server virtualization claims to optimize CPU and memory resources in commodity servers by separating the application software (and in some cases the operating system) layer from the underlying hardware platform, then inserting a hypervisor of some intelligence into the allocation of hardware resources to apps. Storage virtualization takes a similar tack: a storage virtualization software layer abstracts the "value-add" software functionality from storage array controllers and places it into a software layer.

The fundamental merit of this approach, which has crystallized in products from DataCore, FalconStor Software and a few others, is that it enables value-add software functions to be applied across all connected storage hardware, regardless of the brand name on each box. That helps to eliminate consumer lock-ins to proprietary storage vendor rigs and to save big on current on-array software licensing fees.

In the latest developments, DataCore Software has set new industry records by creating stable virtual volumes from commodity disk of a petabyte or greater in size. Their Advanced Site Recovery...are enabling data protection to reach a new level without the associated cost of requiring identical name-brand equipment at your production and disaster recovery environments.

Storage virtualization makes enormous sense from a resource efficiency perspective as well as a cost perspective. By establishing value-add functionality in a software layer that scales independently of hardware, hardware vendors can focus on improving the speeds and feeds of their rigs without concerning themselves with maintaining a complex set of software functions that tend to break more often than the hardware.