There is a lot going on in the server virtualization market these days. HP announced the new virtualization bundles that incorporate a Storage Virtual Appliance from LeftHand (acquired by HP). At VMWorld last fall, VMware started to promote the concept of Storage Virtual Appliances and presentations on vSphere 4.0 include Storage Virtual Appliances as an area of interest for VMware.
Why is there so much noise about it?
First of all, you need shared storage in order to take full advantage of the enhanced features of VMware. VMotion isn't compelling if you're able to move the application, but the datastore becomes unavailable. HP has already demonstrated that by incorporating a Storage Virtual Appliance they can offer bundles at prices that are attractive for SMB and branch office customers while providing access to VMotion and DRS at the same time.
Why is this important?
SMB customers and branch offices have had to go without the high availability and ease of management features they get with VMotion and DRS, because of the cost of the external shared storage. With a Storage Virtual Appliance, the cost of the shared storage is a fraction of the cost of a traditional SAN or NAS.
What's still missing?
It's still too complicated. Most of the virtual appliances have tried addressed the issue of leveraging the server's resources, but haven't addressed the complexity issue. Many are using them as a means to either demonstrate core functionality or to move customers into an external SAN.
Our suggested solution
With a free download of the StorMagic SvSAN software, users can leverage up to 2 Terabytes of internal disk storage and begin sharing datastores right away. To expand beyond 2 Terabytes, it's a simple license key to grow their environment to unlimited capacity. If high availability is important, users can activate it with a license key as well.
With SvSAN, by integrating all of the management functionality (SAN, datastores and RAID) into VMware vCenter and providing automation of routine tasks, administrators can manage everything from vCenter, saving time and simplifying management. Automated datastore provisioning and intuitive management functions also minimize the time required to manage the shared storage.
Do you have to sacrifice performance for lower cost?
StorMagic customer surveys showed that the primary factor affecting storage performance is the underlying performance of the disks under random I/O loads. The Storage Virtual Appliance and other software components can easily keep up with the demands, and would deliver similar performance to external storage arrays with a similar number of disks.
