Storage concepts for IT Pro 3-Virtualization and Tiered

In the first article of this series Storage concepts for IT Pros Part I - RAID Types and IOPS we discuss some important and basic concepts for it professionals about the RAID types available and used today in arrays and also how to calculate IOPS (reading and writing operations) for each type of disk and applications.

In the second article Storage Concepts for IT Pro 2-Controllers and Models we discuss the types of controllers and most common storage technologies available on the market today.

Virtualization
Tiered

In this third article we will see what are tiered virtualization concepts of arrays.

Virtualization

Storage virtualization is conceptually different from virtualization of computers.

In the storages virtualization concept is using a product that connect with various types and models of storage. For example, System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 is able to be the interface between the different arrays and virtual machines. More details on this can be seen in the post http://msincic.wordpress.com/2011/10/06/storage-management-with-system-center-virtual-machine-2012/

VMM2012

The same feature can be achieved with the Windows 3.0 SMB Server 2012, where we can point all LUNs available on a File Server and via the SMB 3.0 map VMs between different arrays.

Tiered

This feature is present in some market and storages can be simulated by VMM. Means having the possibility of having several arrays with different performances and have the ability to move a VM from one storage to another slower faster transparently operation.

This can be simulated by VMM and by Hyper-V 3.0 Storage Migration feature, where we can move VMs with Live Storage Migration allowing the operation is not interrupted when moved between different models of storage available.

However, some models, such as storage and Equallogic, Compellent may contain "containers" of different types of disks, and move the data between the drawers as the performance required of the application or virtual machine. In this case the storage software does this automatically as the load that each VM or application imposes on the storage.

Source: http://www.dellstorage.com/storage-tiering-archiving/storage-tiering.aspx