Storage News

SAN and NAS Virtualization Primer

This article on InfoWorld discusses the benefits and numerous services provided by storage virtualization, which include automatic volume expansion and automated data migration. Storage virtualization can greatly simplify or even automate the time-consuming tasks of increasing capacity and provisioning LUNs. There are four delivery options for storage virtualization services: a hybrid approach, in-band and out-of-band appliances, and controller-based virtualization.

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