IT managers have been advised to be wary of vendor hype surrounding storage virtualization because it is a technology that is poorly defined, misunderstood and not widely used, according to Dr. Kevin McIsaac, an adviser at research firm Intelligent Business Research Services Pty. (IBRS).
Despite all the hype, McIsaac said that, over the next two years, network-based storage virtualization will remain a niche, while thin provisioning will enjoy rapid adoption in the enterprise.
And while McIsaac readily admits that server virtualization is one of the best IT infrastructure trends to emerge in many years, he said the situation is very different when it comes to storage virtualization.
"This idea of being able to layer virtualization over existing storage arrays is seriously flawed," he warned.
McIsaac said a reasonable definition of storage virtualization is "the abstraction of logical storage from physical storage." However, given the sweeping nature of this definition, it is not surprising that the technology creates confusion.
"The first step in understanding storage virtualization is to recognize that many of today's commonly used techniques and technologies are examples of virtualization, including a file system or a storage array," McIsaac said.
Interesting article this at CW
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