A growing number of companies of all sizes are using virtualisation
technology to increase the flexibility of their IT infrastructures.
By virtualising either their servers or their storage - and
sometimes both - these companies are harnessing the power of the
technology to achieve tangible results. Further, as the practice of
virtualisation enters the mainstream, more and more organizations
are quickly expanding their use this enabling technology.
The benefits of virtualisation are available to companies of all
sizes. For example, the American Committee for the Weizmann
Institute of Science (ACWIS) is a prime example of a smaller
organization that is reaping the rewards of combining server and
storage virtualisation within a single data centre. Virtualisation
has broad appeal, because the technology can be applied across
nearly any size and type of server or storage device.
As an example, larger RAID arrays can be virtualised as easily as
modular JBOD devices. Prior to virtualising their storage, ACWIS
had virtualised their servers using VMware, allowing each server to
be partitioned into multiple virtual servers that run
independently, even with different operating systems. This reduced
the number of physical servers needed, enhanced overall resource
utilization, and centralized and simplified management.
Pleased with the results of their server virtualisation project,
ACWIS next focused on its storage environment. Their primary goal
was to efficiently manage storage resources across a Storage Area
Network (SAN), in order to improve both the control and flexibility
of provisioning storage to the server environments. Like many IT
shops, ACWIS uses a broad array of servers, operating systems, SAN
components and storage devices from different vendors. Thus, the
solution would need to simplify storage provisioning across all
storage connected to the SAN, and support server environments which
include VMware, Windows, and Netware. Ultimately, ACWIS selected
the SAN Volume Suite (SVS), a fully integrated, network-based
solution from StoreAge and Troika Networks. SAN Volume Suite is
comprised of StoreAge s Storage Virtualisation Manager deployed on
Troika s Accelera Network Storage Services Platform, a
purpose-built network-based product for hosting storage management
and data protection applications.
By adding SVS, they now enjoy fast and easy storage provisioning
for their virtualised server environments, as well as a single
point for storage management. Plus, they also have a foundation
that supports advanced data protection services such as
replication, mirroring and snapshot to bolster their DR and backup
strategies. By virtualising both their server and storage
environments, they have implemented a highly adaptive IT
infrastructure, allowing network-based storage services to be
deployed independent of physical storage and server resources. This
provides ACWIS exceptional flexibility to select best-of breed
storage and server assets that best meet their needs, and to avoid
the vendor lock-in that is common when deploying proprietary
solutions.
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