Why Virtualize Storage, You Ask? We Ask, ‘Why Not?’
Posted on Thu, Feb 04, 2010
Is it that you don't like saving budget for more valuable endeavors, things that generate revenue or help your enterprise meet mandated standards more cost-effectively?
Not likely.
Maybe you don't want to leverage and maximize the investments you've already made in infrastructure?
That can't be.
And, we know it's not that you prefer having to manage multiple storage environments when one console will do.
Public sector or private, in IT, to get the right answers, you have to ask the right questions. With data propagating prolifically and no end in sight, right about now, a lot of folks are asking themselves whether it's time to implement virtual storage in their environment.
If you have to ask, you probably already know the answer.
If storing data hadn't become an issue, the question wouldn't have arisen.
But fortunately, virtualization technologies-notably in storage-are mature enough now, and their benefits quantifiable and real, making the answers more apparent than ever before.
Consider the upside of virtualizing your storage with companies like Datacore Software:
- With storage virtualization you can change your storage configurations without downtime; no more internal customers griping over data migration.
- Storage virtualization gives you one centrally managed console; your physical disks now look and feel like one unit.
- Whether you inherited disparate legacy systems or just like to "keep your vendors honest," heterogeneous storage environments are managed as easily as identical drives with storage virtualization.
- Your tiered storage architecture is set free; you can migrate data to the optimal drive for it anytime a data-set's priorities change.
- Storage virtualization enhances other systems' performance; helping to boost the performance of subsystems, overcoming sluggishness and reducing things like provisioning times from days to minutes
So, as your data pours in over the transom, the question, "Should we virtualize our storage?" is perhaps no longer relevant. The questions instead may be, "Why shouldn't we virtualize our storage?" and "What are we waiting for?"