Storage virtualization has been around for several decades. While technologies have advanced and capabilities have become more sophisticated over time, the motivations for virtualizing resources and the anticipated benefits have remained relatively stable. Storage virtualization continues to be an important topic because it addresses a number of significant challenges.
HP StorageWorks virtualization
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Table of contents Executive summary............................................................................................................................... 2 Introduction to storage virtualization ...................................................................................................... 3 Virtualization overview......................................................................................................................... 6 Basic principles................................................................................................................................ 6 Why virtualize? ............................................................................................................................... 7 Virtualization taxonomy .................................................................................................................... 9 Implementing storage virtualization .................................................................................................. 10 Storage virtualization tradeoffs ........................................................................................................ 12 A more complete virtualization perspective ........................................................................................... 15 A different perspective.................................................................................................................... 16 HP StorageWorks virtualization today.................................................................................................. 18 HP StorageWorks use cases................................................................................................................ 19 Storage virtualization-more than just hardware................................................................................ 22 HP storage virtualization: The big picture.............................................................................................. 24 HP StorageWorks Extensible Virtualization Stack ............................................................................... 25 Unified storage-delivered as a service............................................................................................ 26 HP StorageWorks virtualization strategy overview ................................................................................. 30 Benefits of the strategy.................................................................................................................... 31 Lower costs by simplifying storage................................................................................................ 31 Accelerate growth with agile infrastructure .................................................................................... 31 Mitigate risk with reliable storage................................................................................................. 31 Summary .......................................................................................................................................... 32 For more information.......................................................................................................................... 33 References..................................................................................................................................... 33 Further reading.............................................................................................................................. 33 Executive summary
Storage virtualization has been around for several decades. While technologies have advanced and capabilities have become more sophisticated over time, the motivations for virtualizing resources and the anticipated benefits have remained relatively stable. Storage virtualization continues to be an important topic because it addresses a number of significant challenges. Storage vendors, the media, and other sources expound on virtualization's merits in ways that might lead one to conclude that the term has a single, agreed-upon meaning and value-that perhaps one size fits all. Indeed, the range of storage virtualization technologies and solutions has continued to evolve as storage hardware, the software that powers them, and external storage management applications have matured. This can often create confusion. Customers look to suppliers like HP for guidance and l... [download for more]