Precisely what is Data Storage Virtualization?
A data storage virtualization method lets you decrease the number of physical hardware resources needed to support applications. It will do this by simply abstracting main disk and travel components and aggregating all their capacity as being a single pool area of safe-keeping available to applications for use. This kind of pool of storage can then be managed with a central unit to deliver operational and economic benefits like faster resource provisioning and catastrophe recovery capacities.
The key to storage virtualization is program that intercepts input/output (I/O) requests by physical and virtual hosting space and paths them to the suitable physical location on a shared pool of storage. Towards the application, the virtual storage area appears as being a single, continuous drive or rational unit number (LUN) to accept common read and write surgical treatments.
While basic storage products, such as solo hard disk drives and basic storage arrays, do not provide any check over here type of virtualization, advanced disk arrays offer a reasonable to physical abstraction through RAID systems and a host-based volume director. This type of virtualization enables features like snapshots, cloning and replication to be supported across different sellers.
Network-based storage area virtualization is the most common form of the technology. Through this approach, a purpose-built equipment connects to all or any the storage hardware in an FC or perhaps iSCSI utility area network (SAN) and signifies them to be a single pool area of storage space. Towards the operating system or perhaps application, the resulting electronic disks or perhaps LUNs show up as though they reside about the same physical disk and have total functionality, which includes multi-pathing application.