Benefits Of Server And Storage Virtualization

Dealing with difficult to manage, diverse, and inaccessible storage resources.

Most businesses have a combination of fibre-channel, SCSI, and/or NAS based storage. Storage systems are either directly attached to servers via SCSI or through fibre-channel. These systems participate natively or via a bridge in a fibre-channel based storage network, or are NAS systems attached directly to an Ethernet LAN. It's no surprise to find a couple or all of these configurations being used in small, medium, and large businesses. Storage configurations and management have been evolving for several decades. Administrators have made diverse storage decisions over the past years driven by business needs, budgets, and the technology of the time. This diversity of protocols, storage systems and physical connections has created a host of challenges for network and storage administrators.

In the early 1990's the "Internet" was complex, expensive and difficult to access. By 2001, with the use of new technologies and standards, the Internet has greater simplicity and is far more cost-effective than ever before. This has made the use and benefits of the Internet commonplace both at work and at home, with people using it as easily as they do the telephone.

Supporting company networks, managing server applications, file systems and storage resources have been common challenges facing network and system administrators since the 1960's. Administrators are looking for the same combination that made the Internet universal, to help them manage their ever growing networked storage. There is a demand for better storage management but technology, standards, simplicity and cost-efficiency have yet to be combined into a single answer. There are many storage management solutions available today but they lack one or more of the elements required for the majority of businesses.

Despite this, the future looks bright. By mid 2002 technological advances will provide familiar, simple and cost-effective solutions. Based on existing and new standards, solutions will be made available that solve the storage management dilemma for all levels of business applications. This paper will review one of the leading solutions, the SANRAD V-Switch, and compare it to earlier legacy products.

We will review how the V-Switch provides technology, standards, simplicity, and cost-efficiency combined with scalability, flexibility, reliability and high performance. All these elements are included in a single platform addressing the need for better storage management. Simplicity is key and technology makes it possible.