Virtualised storage was a game changing technology for IT. The introduction of virtualisation has delivered many benefits for IT departments around the world, though some people still don’t know exactly what they’re dealing with. Joe Lipscombe talks with industry experts in order to bring you the lowdown on the project on everyone’s lips.
IT has arguably been redefined as a service, and this requires a more flexible, virtualised infrastructure where virtual storage can complement virtual servers in order to unfetter information from its physical systems. However, making the leap into a virtual world can be a complex and daunting process. Enterprises need to be presented with a transparent, fundamental rundown of the features and benefits which make virtualising your servers a ‘must-do’ businesses venture.
“It is well established that virtual servers bring agility, efficiency and numerous other benefits,” says Ehab Abass, Senior Technology Consultant, EMC.
Basil Ayass, Enterprise Product Manager, Dell ME, adds a different perspective: “Storage convergence and virtualisation are key enablers for today’s enterprise technology evolution. A highly-virtualised approach to storage can complement server virtualisation by providing ready access to critical data, while avoiding unnecessary hardware purchases and the associated power, cooling, and management expenses that go along with them.”
Andrew Childs, Principal Consultant, Huawei ME, says that if an organisation already has heterogeneous storage array equipment in their data centre, virtualisation can help consolidate all of the arrays under a centralised management facility which will achieve optimised performance, control, and allow for more accurate reporting.
The experts all share a very positive view on virtualising storage but there’s no such thing as a free lunch. What are the main issues that businesses may face when virtualising their servers?
“It’s all about the data access and data migration method. Storage virtualisation moves device-specific functions into the virtualisation layer. This means that all the current processes like data replication, backups, cloning, automation and monitoring must be redeployed under virtualised storage again,” says Marcin Bulynko, Team Leader, IBM Platform Services.
Taking a step into the unknown is always a major concern for any enterprise, as Ayass explains: “The biggest challenge enterprises are facing when virtualising their storage is change. Change in the requests their users place on them, change in the multitude of messages they receive from storage vendors and change in the actual technology offering.”
When making drastic adjustments to your IT systems, care must be taken not to fall into a situation where you become counterproductive. Mohan Sundaram, Manager, Enterprise Servers and Storage, Enterprise Infrastructure, Emitac, says: “The next challenge is the scalability of the storage in terms of capacity and performance bandwidth. As we improve the utilisation of the virtualised storage through capacity optimisation more hosts are bound to be attached to it which puts a demand on its bandwidth and ability to cope with higher IOPS requests. A poorly designed virtualised storage may therefore become a problem to solve instead of solving existing problems.”
Money talks
One key element to consider when making any change is outgoings. Enterprises need to weigh up the costs of a project; the cost of purchasing it, the cost of implementing it and the cost of supporting it in the long run. Also, it is important to see where savings, if any, are being made. Experts claim that virtualised storage is a major expenditure saver, but not immediately.
“In the short term, procurement costs are associated with a storage virtualisation project. However, the benefits far outweigh the costs in the long term,” says Ayass.
Boby Joseph, CEO, StorIT, warns that organisations might end up buying multiple brands of storage, which could become expensive.
“Trying to virtualise your whole data centre into different storage brands in order to suit all your applications would be timely and costly. Application vendors are key people in the way that they have to certify the storage vendor, so that you have a guarantee that your applications are going to run in their data centre. Getting this wrong could sting you – compatibility is the most important thing in that sense,” he adds.
Sundaram breaks down the reductions to CAPEX and OPEX following virtualisation of storage. “Virtualisation results in reduced CAPEX, as the available resources are better utilised – this avoids additional procurements – and better performance for the right applications is achieved, thereby maximising the performance and dollar,” he says.
He adds that the OPEX is reduced by decreasing the personnel required to manage per terabyte of data. In other words, more terabytes could be managed by less people as virtualisation enables single pane of glass management. It is also well established that 70% of IT budget is consumed in just managing the existing infrastructure. In such a scenario the reduction in CAPEX and OPEX through virtualisation could empower CIOs to better innovate with the existing budgets.
Shopping for vendors
The virtualisation can be implemented at different layers; host, storage array or fabric layer – it all depends on the size and type of the infrastructure. Storage is virtualised on the data path between the hosts and storage area network (SAN) attached storage devices – usually an appliance connected to the fabric managing the heterogeneous storage devices.
When businesses are selecting the technology, Bulynko says that the following factors should be considered: “Compatibility with existing infrastructure, especially storage and host bus adapter (HBA) connectivity, applications that meet the required IOPS, bandwidth and latency, and critically, a provider or systems integrator that can demonstrate the right skills to consult, migrate, implement and support the virtualised storage solution to meet the enterprise’s requirements.”
Childs adds: “An enterprise should select the right virtualisation vendor based on the maximum compatibility with the existing storage arrays, and work with them to create a comprehensive design strategy for current and future growth. Moreover, the end user should have a clear understanding on what value-add features are required and what is supported by the virtualisation vendor.”
Adopting the idea
The adoption rates of virtualised storage differ among regions. The Middle East isn’t fully onboard with the transformation as of yet, but the experts are claiming that it’s only a matter of time before businesses fully commit to this technology. However, concerns still hover.
“The Middle East is still enjoying economic growth above world-wide average and the data growth in the region is on the rise, so information security is always a concern. Therefore, companies need to look for the storage solutions that are well integrated with security solutions and can scale on the long run according to their growing needs,” says Abass.
“It’s important that they make the decision to buy storage solutions based on how it enables them to provide the business with efficiency, agility and information protection,” he adds.
Joseph states that due to customer pressure, service providers have been forced to lead the way locally in virtualising storage.
“Virtualising an entire data centre environment isn’t really adopting as fast as you may expect, because that raises the most challenges. However, service providers are being put under pressure from their customers to virtualise storage space and this has indirectly made them path the way forward in terms of virtualisation in this region,” he says.
Sundaram says that, historically, the region has shown enthusiasm in adopting new technologies once the same has gained enough traction elsewhere. “This puts the region in an interesting position where they are not early adopters of technology, but at the same time they do not get left behind either,” he adds.
With this information in mind, the next 12 to 18 months could see a vast expansion of adoption in virtualised storage in the Middle East. The rapid increase in data growth and mobility usage demands more storage servers in affordable and accessible packages.
“There will be a dramatic increase in the take-up over the next couple of years as Middle East customers begin to execute their plans to move to cloud based data centres and usage-based charging for IT services,” Childs predicts.
Ayass adds to this, urging Middle East enterprises to focus on the trend: “More enterprises in the Middle East need to take time to classify and store data in order to get the most out of them through their complete lifecycle.”
Data growth and customer demand for safe, affordable storage of data is the stand out reason that enterprises will be making the step towards virtualised storage in the near future. Eventually, it could simply be accepted as the default storage solution, according to Bulynko.
“I think virtualisation will extend into smaller environments from the current high-end infrastructure environments that we see today.
Especially with technologies like iSCSI and FCoE becoming more affordable, we will see more re-usage of the older storage technologies as Tier 2 or Tier 3 storage, under the virtualisation layer. Storage virtualisation will become as standard as what we are seeing with server virtualisation,” he concludes.
