Exploit Storage Beyond the Central Disk Array

Our Advice

Critical Insight

• Shared networked storage is still necessary. It is a key cog in virtualization, VDI initiatives, and file storage. However, many technologies have surfaced that enable these initiatives to be equally (or more) successful with less storage than traditionally prescribed. This saves IT significant time, money, and resources.
• VDI continues to be a hot infrastructure trend. The cost of shared networked storage to provision large numbers of virtual desktops is a major challenge. Moving desktops from distributed PCs to server hosted virtual machines means that storage goes from cheap distributed disks to more expensive consolidated server storage.
• Server virtualization has moved into the mainstream. As the technology has matured, the majority have moved production workloads onto virtual servers, connected to proprietary storage arrays. Most small to mid-sized enterprises do not have the required resources to properly assess current and future requirements, making sizing up storage a stumbling block for deployment.
• Data growth has exploded, and Info-Tech predicts that the growth of unstructured data (and thus personal files) will grow between twenty and thirty times what it is today by 2020. This drastically increases the frequency at which IT must reinvest time, money, and resources into purchasing, implementing, and managing Network Attached Storage (NAS) arrays.

Impact and Result

• New VDI optimization methods like purpose-built VDI appliances (e.g. Pivot3), memory caching (e.g. Atlantis), and I/O sequencing (e.g. Virsto) drastically reduce storage capacity by 90% and increase IOPS performance by 10 times. These technologies make VDI projects more successful than before, since they solve the traditional roadblock of attaining cheap IOPS per dollar.
• Storage virtualization using storage hypervisors (e.g. DataCore SANsymphony-V), virtualized storage arrays (e.g. HP P4000 VSA), and hypervisor-based appliances (e.g. VMware vSphere Storage Appliance) abstract storage management off the array. This enables deployment of advanced storage and virtualization features on commodity servers, and allows larger organizations to deploy lower-cost or repurposed storage, minimizing vendor lock-in, while maintaining resiliency and performance features.
• File sharing services like Box.com, VMware’s Project Octopus, and Citrix’s ShareFile allow organizations to deploy their files and folders to the public Cloud. These services act as a secure file repository and takes stress off NAS. Small to mid-sized organizations should explore file sharing services to combat the explosive growth of personal files, while improving accessibility for end users.