Virtual Storage…is Real

In the past two weeks, storage virtualization seems to have found its way to the forefront.

Two weeks ago, CommVault (NASDAQ: CVLT) took its storage management product, Simpana, to the cloud with an eye on
organizations requiring more space for archiving, replacing infrastructure or
looking to simplify compliance management. Commvault described the product as
a “cloud storage connector for Simpana” and sells it under a $900 per-terabyte
capacity license. Customers can store data on-premises, or in a public or private
cloud and move it back and forth as necessary.

It’s no surprise that CommVault is far from alone in seeing the value in storage
virtualization solutions. On Tuesday, Virsto joined
the fray with its first product: Virsto One, a hypervisor-based storage virtualization
solution.

The problems enterprises face with storage virtualization are two-fold, Virsto CEO Mark Davis told ServerWatch. First, there’s the human element involved with the convergence its name implies: The virtualization team is coming from a server point of view, while the storage team is looking at it from a purely storage point of view.

Then there’s the technological issue of storage backup being a big problem once virtual machines are up and running. The most effective way to backup the virtual machines is do so in a way that doesn’t involve the box itself being backed up. The easiest and most common way to handle this is to snapshot the virtual machine’s image and backup. The problem with this approach is that the oft-documented virtual machine sprawl leads to virtual storage sprawl because virtual machines are similar to a storage environment and “cry out for deduplication,” Davis said.

Read the rest at ServerWatch.