How Intelligent is Your Storage System?

We have always counted on storage systems to provide software based services like snapshots, RAID protection, replication and thin provisioning, but now operating systems (OS) or file systems are offering much of those capabilities. This Information Week article questions if we need the storage systems to offer them as well?

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"Compare the cost of a storage system from a vendor that does not offer the advanced software functionality and you will see that there is a cost associated with the bundled storage software.

"The issue in the past has been that performing all these storage services within the OS is that there would be a negative performance impact. The server running the software couldn’t provide the resources to perform these functions as well as whatever else it was designed to do. If there is one thing that server virtualization has taught us is that we have excess processing power and we can ask server hardware to do more than one task now. In addition to having additional processing power the software that performs these functions has become increasingly more efficient. For many environments the combination of these two factors can negate any potential performance impact."

Read the Full Story at Information Week