A data storage area virtualization remedy lets you decrease the number of physical hardware methods needed to support applications. It can do this simply by abstracting actual disk and travel components and aggregating all their capacity being a single pool of safe-keeping available to applications for use. This kind of pool of storage is then managed with a central gaming system to deliver functional and economical benefits just like faster resource provisioning and disaster recovery capacities.
The key to storage virtualization is software program that intercepts input/output (I/O) requests by physical and virtual servers and tracks them to the appropriate physical site on a distributed pool of storage. Towards the application, the virtual safe-keeping appears as being a single, continuous drive or logical unit number more info here (LUN) to accept common read and write surgical procedures.
While straightforward storage gadgets, such as one hard disk drives and basic drive arrays, do not provide virtually any sort of virtualization, advanced disk arrays offer a logical to physical abstraction through RAID schemes and a host-based volume director. This type of virtualization enables features like pictures, cloning and replication to get supported across different sellers.
Network-based storage area virtualization is the most common form of the technology. Through this approach, a purpose-built gadget connects to any or all the storage hardware in an FC or iSCSI utility area network (SAN) and reveals them like a single pool area of safe-keeping. For the operating system or application, the resulting online disks or perhaps LUNs look as though they will reside about the same physical storage and have complete functionality, including multi-pathing software.