Value of a Virtualized Storage Infrastructure

Posted on in IT Management

ESG logo"…when things ‘just happen,’ they often are not designed for ease or efficiency."

Although ESG's white paper "The Context and Value of a Fully Virtualized Storage Infrastructure" is a bit outdated (Nov 2009), many of the concepts are still relevant. These are exactly the sorts of things I have to think about in my work for a cloud provider. The following are some notes I took during my reading.

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For decades, IT has been focused on effectiveness at the expense of efficiency. In order to optimize IT, it is imperative that the move by made to the IT equivalent of just-in-time (JIT) manufacturing. To achieve this, three elements must fall into place:

  1. Management determination
  2. Overall architecture
  3. Virtualized resources

Data growth is a major driver of today's technology changes. The two factors most influencing data growth are digital media and regulatory compliance.

"Resource consumption is thus matched to actual need"

HP's Virtualized Storage Infrastructure divides storage into four focus areas:

  1. Storage virtualization
  2. Application integration
  3. Capacity and power optimization
  4. Storage and server convergence

Reducing operational costs was seen as the most important IT investment over the next 12 to 24 months. The most important hurdle to overcome to generate buy-in is proof that virtualized storage will reduce costs (both capital and operational) as compared to traditional storage solutions.

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