"When you get into more complex applications and more detailed planning, it's best to consult with your application vendors," Boles said.Įditor's Tip: For more information about managing storage in a virtual environment, check out sister site SearchStorage's podcast on storage management tools for virtual environments.įor most environments, networked storage and a multipath architecture will be base requirements. "Don't virtualize and think you are going to make do with less storage in the process," Boles said. Ushijima has also seen Solarwinds Inc.'s Storage Profiler and Aptare Inc.'s StorageConsole Virtualization Manager used to analyze capacity and performance needs.
Jeff Boles, a senior analyst and director of validation services for the Taneja Group, said that admins should conduct a thorough assessment of current I/O patterns, and then use analysis tools such as Virtual Instruments NetWisdom to determine physical environment storage and performance needs before moving to a virtual environment.
"It is important to consider your performance needs from both hardware and software perspective." Matthew Ushijima, a senior consultant for GlassHouse Technologies Inc. "When planning out the storage side of any virtual environment, determine what kinds of systems you are going to virtualize because a lot of people don't take into consideration the performance and capacity requirements of those systems before building their VM environments," said W. GETTING STARTED WITH VIRTUAL SERVER STORAGE iSCSI, and about the other choices you have available.
In this tutorial on virtual server storage, you will learn how to choose the best virtual server storage for your organization, the pros and cons of Fibre Channel vs. Whether you plan to use VMware Inc.'s vSphere, Microsoft Corp's Hyper-V or Citrix Systems Inc.'s XenServer virtualization platforms, you'll need a storage system with sufficient performance capabilities and capacity to support the flexible environment virtual servers allow, but at the same time be manageable by a small IT staff and fit in an SMB budget. Choosing the right primary storage for your virtual server environment involves balancing performance, capacity, ease of use and cost.
Implementing a virtual server environment can help small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) consolidate IT resources and create a more flexible infrastructure.