data center virtualization
Virtualized storage assets provide the data center with a flexible architecture for assigning storage across servers in response to dynamic computing needs and enables dynamic migration of virtual machines across physical hosts.

Reducing data center complexity and administrative cost remains a key priority for all customers today who face continued growth in the physical volume of storage. Today, many storage and server assets are locked up in inflexible storage/server/ application “silos”. An application is installed on a particular server which is uniquely assigned access to the data needed to run the application. Each application has its own dedicated server and data. Should an application outgrow a given server, either the server is replaced by a larger server which results in substantial cost and downtime, or the data for application is copied to a second server which runs in parallel creating costly and complicated replication requirements. The resulting architecture is a data center with many storage-server-application silos, where hardware is not easily reassigned in response to periodic or event driven swings in utilization of each application or in response to hardware failure.

Shared data is the key to data center virtualization. Melio and LaScala allow storage to be centrally managed as a single virtual pool of data, allowing volumes to be easily reassigned or shared among application servers on physical or virtual machines. Because all the servers have access to files simultaneously, administrators can flexibly scale up the performance of data access. Virtual machine images can be stored on shared storage volumes, enabling any virtual machine to be easily and quickly moved to any host server. Shared data also offers simplicity. Administrators do not need to worry about singe points of failure or about maintaining data on a server-by-server basis. They can aggregate many storage arrays and treat them as a single shared storage pool. And the entire storage pool can be backed up from a single server.

Sanbolic’s products simplify storage architecture and are key enabling technologies for moving from inflexible and often proprietary storage/server/application silos to flexible virtualized data center infrastructure. Sanbolic’s software also supports Microsoft Active Directory and Windows Security, Network Load Balancing, and Distributed File System, further simplifying applications.

This emerging architecture aims to take advantage of several key trends:

1. The cost advantage of industry standard Intel/AMD architecture chips based on the very high volume of global production for PCs and small servers using these chips.

2. The emergence of virtual machine technology in open system hardware, which decouples an application from a physical server, allowing more flexible use of server hardware infrastructure when used in conjunction with a shared file system.

3. Increased customer interest in managing data availability, quality of service, and protection systematically over the data’s lifecycle, as well as complying with the increasing number of government regulations impacting data storage policies.

4. The recognition by customers that, as hardware becomes less expensive, the cost of managing complex infrastructures are an increasingly important component of total cost of ownership for these systems.

5. The migration of data management functionality from proprietary hardware platforms to open system software that can be deployed across heterogeneous hardware in a storage network.

For more information regarding utility computing solution please email sales@sanbolic.com or call +1 617 833 4242