Choosing an Appropriate Virtual Storage Technology
As virtualization becomes the norm in various businesses, new virtual server technologies have started coming up. The major players such as Microsoft and Xen are all offering support for using network-attached storage (NAS), storage area networks (SANs) and direct-attached storage (DAS). Here is information on how to choose the right data hosting solution for your virtual environment.
DAS, for starters can be deployed in various forms – i.e. through disks deployed in the server chassis or through external storage enclosures. The good thing about this solution is that it is cheaper than the other two. The downside is that it cannot be shared and scalability is limited. It also doesn’t come with advanced features such as remote replications or snapshots. However, while these capabilities may be good to have handy, they may not even be needed in the virtual environment that you currently have.
NAS, on the other hand, is shareable and it is scalable as far as performance and capacity is concerned. However, performance can be a problem for larger virtual environments. It does provide additional features such as replication, thin provisioning and snapshots. These are great for most virtual environments. But be ready to foot higher costs as devices can be quite expensive.
Finally, there are the SANs. These systems are sharable and they are highly scalable on the performance and capacity perspective. They are also suitable for large deployments. SANs also come with synchronous replication functionalities and the environments can be really resilient.
When choosing a storage solution, it is best to assess the needs of your virtual environment. If you’re working on a limited budget, start with a DAS. Go for either NAS or SAN if you’re working with a growing virtual environment, however. But if you require high levels of resiliency, it’s best to stick with SAN.
