Storage virtualization is described by StoreAge Networking Technologies Ltd., as the technology that separates the logical representation of storage from the actual physical storage components.
Based in Israel, with US offices in Irvine, Calif., StoreAge has been getting its version of the technology, Storage Virtualization Manager (SVM™), which provides centrally managed storage pooling and virtual volume allocations for the entire SAN, into a lot of high-visibility situations.
For instance, last fall, SVM was deployed at Guangdong TV, the official operator and broadcaster of the 9th Chinese Sports Games. Guangdong TV needed to meet the performance requirements of its video streaming system over a very large storage area network (SAN). To meet these requirements, each volume containing video data was striped over many RAID sub-systems, aggregating not only the capacity of these storage devices but also the performance of several RAID controllers. StoreAge says its SVM, with its asymmetric virtualization technology, enabled this configuration of more than 90 servers and --> RAID controllers in a very demanding application at a fraction of the cost of alternative solutions, which otherwise would have had to include extremely powerful and expensive RAID devices. The SVM provided a uniform and centralized management view of all SAN components,
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which were supplied by a number of different manufacturers.
StoreAge has had similar video deployments including with Telecinco, the leading Spanish broadcasting company and, most recently, with the Seoul Broadcasting System (SBS), Korea's largest broadcasting company. The SVM offered SBS a uniform and centralized management view of all SAN components. Each SBS broadcasting channel deployed a fully redundant configuration consisting of multiple servers, each running a Win2000 OS using QLogic HBAs, dual switched fabric consisting of Brocade intelligent fabric switches or Gadzoox Networks' switches and dual SVM appliance. SBS ran multi-user video editing applications that share files in the network via IBM's Tivoli SANergy.
But it isn't just broadcasters that like SVM. In a recent report, the Evaluator Group wrote: "StoreAge has developed what would appear to a very cost-effective storage virtualization solution." Evaluator group also praised SVM for its ability to add features over time and for its promise to reduce administrative costs. However, Evaluator cautioned that StoreAge had yet to show long-term user experience or provide broader customer testimonials.
About the author: Alan Earls is a freelance writer in Franklin, MA.
For more information:
For additional information about StoreAge, visit its Web site.
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About the author: Alan Earls is a freelance writer in Franklin, MA.
This was first published in April 2002