Storage Virtualization – NCSA Server Virtualization Explained

Storage virtualization – The important topic in the Data Center, Specifically two types of virtualization now a days in Server virtualization and Storage Virtualization – NCSA ( Netapp Certified Storage Associate ). Revolutionary things how we do the things, We are going to see Netapp Storage virtualization in this article.

Storage Virtualization / Server Virtualization is changed alot to utilise hardware and its resources. 

Storage Virtualization

Storage Virtualization Layer

Virtualization Layer

           As shown above apps are not directly going to install on hardware, Hardware is going to convert as virtualized by the help of hypervisor. By installing virtualized layer in between Operating System and Hardware, We are going to deal with Virtual machines. When we are dealing with VM’s utilising hardware in effective way and optimised way.

           The basic idea is how the hardware is going to utilise in proper way, When application is running directly an hardware using operating system but Server hardware is not utilised fully which means some part of hardware resource is still free. In this case we are wasting resource equal to money So lot of cost. 

Advantages in virtualization

  • Fewer Server resource required
  • Lower Operating Cost
  • Low Man Power required for managing
  • More Flexible compare to physical environment
  • Availability 
  • Backup and Restore of virtual machine is very simple
  • Snapshot technology will protect virtual machine from disaster recovery

         Adding new server to the environment just few mouse clicks your server will be ready. When server hardware is fully utilised from one of the host we can just move an virtual machine from one physical host to another physical host using VMotion technology.

        As we see above server virtualization is more effective and powerful technology for most of the data center environments, Netapp looked at explosion of server virtualization and they quickly came to some realisation. Just think about it your saving all this money when do server virtualization it could actually have reverse affect an storage. In-fact VMware themselves they say when you spend $1 on virtual machine you have to spend 4$ to 5$ on storage.

 Think about it when we have server virtualization we required more and more storage to store Virtual Machine to the result we end up with storage sprawl . Using standard server environment we would have end up with server sprawl.

Storage Virtualization

When we come back to the Netapp Storage, it full filled an requirement for the virtualization environments.

  • Resources are Pooled
  • Multiple protocols are supported
  • High utilisation if storage
  • Lower Total Cost of Ownership

Its more that we required storage and dependencies on SAN environment, If  storage failed then dependent applications and server will fails, To over come these issues storage virtualization technology is implemented

To effective storage management and low cost fully protective way Netapp comes with an RAID-DP concept. RAID-DP will be implemented in low cost and more protective and we get more performance compare to other RAID technologies

Netapp Storage implemented snapshot technology to take backups and protect all the real time data with minimal and optimal space requirements. Restore process and restore resource dramatically reduced.

Deduplication

Deduplication technology will help in reducing the space requirements, it almost save the space usage by Approx 50%.

Please provide your valuable comments ….

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Thanks for your wonderful Support and Encouragement

Ankam Ravi Kumar

Working as Linux / Storage Administrator L3. Interested in sharing the knowledge.

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