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Showing posts with label storage virtualization. Show all posts
Showing posts with label storage virtualization. Show all posts

Friday, December 13, 2013

Slack: Decoding common virtual data storage terms

Storage technology has its own language. Marketing departments and product managers invent words and vitiate common phrases to describe how storage technology works and how it advances an organization's goals. Storage virtualization vendors may be guiltier of this than others because the way they decouple hardware and software is often difficult to explain.

Sometimes we get carried away, and many times it's difficult to decipher virtual data storage terms, especially when you are comparing technologies or systems before a big purchasing decision. Just what is a "value-added, impactful solution" anyway?

In this podcast, analyst firm Storage Switzerland LLC's senior analyst Eric Slack breaks down some common virtual data storage terms to help you decode sales and marketing gibberish and determine which technology and product is right for your environment.

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Wednesday, February 13, 2013

VMware software-defined data center bolstered by Virsto acquisition

VMware Inc. characterized its acquisition of storage software startup Virsto Software Corp. this week as a piece of its software-defined data center strategy. Perhaps it is also a move to keep Microsoft at bay now that Hyper-V is gaining recognition as a viable alternative to VMware's hypervisors.

Virsto refers to its software as a "storage hypervisor" because it sets out to virtualize storage the way VMware and other vendors' hypervisors virtualize servers. Virsto consists of a storage software appliance and a service that runs inside the hypervisor on the physical host, and promises to optimize block-storage performance, capacity utilization and provisioning.

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Friday, December 14, 2012

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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