Virtual storage 2012: VDI, VM-aware and software dominate news

The biggest news stories of 2012 about storage for virtual environments and storage virtualization involved using storage better for virtual desktops and servers. Software, particularly for virtual appliances, was also big news, but old-fashioned storage virtualization systems have stuck around too.

Here are the major news stories and trends in this category in 2012.

1. VDI storage problems solved

At many companies, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) technology went from the test and development phase to successful implementations this year, largely because those companies solved their VDI storage problems.

Storage vendors are offering reference architectures and benchmarks for VDI deployments using their products alongside those of computing and networking partners. Increased use of solid-state storage is also improving user acceptance of VDI.

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Virsto upgrades virtual machine storage management SW for HA

Virsto Software Corp. this week updated its virtual machine storage management software for VMware Inc.'s vSphere server virtualization platform. Virsto for vSphere 2.0 includes improved high-availability functionality to protect data during hardware failures and increased support for Citrix Systems Inc.'s XenDesktop virtual desktop infrastructure platform.

Virsto launched in 2010 with support only for Microsoft's Hyper-V hypervisor, and added its vSphere product in January 2012. Virsto's software, which the vendor refers to as a storage hypervisor, uses a logging architecture to improve virtual environment performance. It also supports writable clones and snapshots for provisioning storage and protecting data.

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Nutanix offers scale-out storage options for its Complete Cluster

Nutanix Inc. today released a new series of its scale-out storage and compute cluster products, and updated its Nutanix Operating System. The new NX-3000 series lets customers scale storage and compute separately with performance nodes, and software advances include compression and replication for disaster recovery.

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