For those of you who think that the storage and I/O paths in a virtualized environment have already been solved by VMware, think again. VMware created VMFS as a necessity in its ESX environment to be able to share a common disk pool, enable the mobility of virtual machines between physical servers, and balance the I/O between many virtual machines fighting for shared bandwidth, capacity, and performance. Features such as VMotion, DRS, and Site Recovery Manager all require VMFS. And, by the way, storage performance remains a top issue in a virtualized environment.

In comes Virsto. Virsto One is initially compatible with Microsoft Hyper-V environments to solve the exact dilemma VMware solved with VMFS. Mixed I/O workloads are becoming more and more common as administrators look to drive up relatively low consolidation ratios–5:1 on average, according to recent ESG research. As companies target the virtualization platform for business- and mission-critical workloads, performance, maximum utilization, and ease of management quickly become top priorities. Virsto extends the value of server virtualization by virtualizing the storage as well–the value of virtualization is extended into the underlying storage infrastructure and IT can plan to scale with confidence.

Virsto has some company: companies like Sanbolic and Microsoft Cluster Shared Volumes are looking to improve the reliability, agility, and manageability of virtualized environments. As storage management, capacity utilization, and efficiency remain top priorities, it will be interesting to watch each of these solutions mature in a market that offers ample opportunity for growth.

Related posts:

1. Benchmarking Storage Systems in a Virtual World
2. SANs Stall Server Virtualization
3. Microsoft and VMware Storage Migration Tools
4. Cloud: Cisco UCS ….. cloud enabler?
5. Virtualization and Security

Tags: Hyper-V, Microsoft, Sanbolic, server virtualization, Virsto, VMFS, VMware