Make the business case for storage virtualization

By: Vawn Himmelsbach - ComputerWorld Canada (23 Nov 2007)

Not a lot of companies have virtualized their storage, since they don’t understand what it’s all about, or they don’t see a compelling reason to do so.

CASE STUDY: Memory Sizing for Server Virtualization.

Learn how Intel’s IT division avoided paying for unused memory and associated power and cooling, by determining optimal memory sizing for their virtualized server network. Includes a step by step plan for determining virtualization host memory size. No registration required.

Server virtualization is a much easier sell, since it’s driven around consolidation, with tangible cost savings. Storage virtualization, on the other hand, is really about getting longer life out of storage assets. For companies considering a virtual storage environment, it’s less about capacity and more about the complexity of the infrastructure.

And the cost savings are not as clear-cut as server virtualization, said Jason Bremner, director of research for Canadian infrastructure hardware with IDC Canada. Where you could see some cost savings is in better utilization of storage capacity. Once you take your storage out of the confines of attached storage, you’re making it more usable for more applications and more customers, but you’re also protecting it by having a redundant environment. It takes time for IT staff to allocate and deploy storage capacity, said Bremner. See also Canadian Space Agency explores virtualization

Unstructured data is driving additional storage capacity needs, and many organizations don’t have formal guidelines around that. And it’s difficult for an IT manager to go to the management of a small company and tell them they only get 50MB of storage – or enough for about 250 e-mails.

“Storage virtualization can help with that as long as it’s seamless to the end-user,” he said.

In a recent IDC survey of Canadian firms with more than 500 employees, 23 per cent of respondents said they’re using storage virtualization. Only only six per cent of medium-size firms (with 100 to 499 employees) responding to the survey said they were. About equal numbers of medium and large firms plan to adopt it in the next year.

But there are still large numbers that aren’t adopting storage virtualization – 76 per cent of medium firms and 74 per cent of large firms say they don’t see a need for it.

“[IT executives] really need to figure out what benefits they’re going to get from this,” said Bremner. “They have to sell it internally because as much as it makes sense, it’s probably not as clear-cut as server virtualization.”

Even though it’s been around for a few years, it’s still confusing, so some education needs to take place. Potential benefits include business continuity and compliance with accounting regulations. Look at how storage virtualization technologies map into what you already have. Also, look at different vendors, and which technologies you’re betting on to be around for the next couple of years.

Virtualization is really focused on removing some of the complexities of the information infrastructure itself, not necessarily the management of those objects, which are more tightly coupled to the business application, said Doc Derrico, vice-president of infrastructure software with EMC. When EMC entered the storage virtualization realm, it was targeting that management problem, but found customers were really trying to solve a much more pressing problem: data mobility.