A data storage virtualization resolution lets you decrease the number of physical hardware assets needed to support applications. It will do this simply by abstracting actual disk and travel components and aggregating their particular capacity as being a single pool area of storage area available to applications for use. This pool of storage can now be managed by a central unit to deliver functional and economic benefits just like faster resource provisioning and problems recovery functions.
The key to storage virtualization is program that intercepts input/output (I/O) requests by physical and virtual servers and tracks them to the proper physical site on a distributed pool of storage. For the application, the virtual safe-keeping appears as a single, continuous drive or rational unit amount box data room (LUN) to accept common read and write experditions.
While straightforward storage equipment, such as sole hard disk drives and basic hard drive arrays, will not provide any kind of form of virtualization, advanced disk arrays offer a logical to physical abstraction through RAID strategies and a host-based volume administrator. This type of virtualization enables features like pictures, cloning and replication for being supported around different vendors.
Network-based storage virtualization is the most common form of the technology. With this approach, a purpose-built device connects to any or all the safe-keeping hardware within an FC or iSCSI storage space network (SAN) and shows them as a single pool of storage. Towards the operating system or application, the resulting virtual disks or LUNs appear as though that they reside about the same physical disk and have total functionality, which include multi-pathing software program.