Seagate ST3600057FC Storage Strategies for Server Virtualization - Page 2

Storage Strategies for Server Virtualization Getting the Most From Virtualized Environments Without Breaking Your IT Budget One successful strategy to achieve this is virtualizing storage for virtualized servers. Pool physical storage resources and allocate them virtually as needed as virtual servers are deployed. There are many ways to pool storage. Whatever vendor or technology is being evaluated, the following capabilities for your server virtualizationfriendly storage should be considered: • Centrally managed storage allocation so storage can be deployed-at a minimum-at the same aggregation level that servers are deployed • Extreme scalability, including expansion slots, support for 1-TB+ SAS and/or SATA drives, and the ability to upgrade drives over time for higher capacity • Thin client support. The ability to overprovision virtual resources to improve storage utilization efficiency Rule 2: Lower cost per utilized gigabyte With the right virtual storage in place, virtual server deployment becomes even easier. Data and storage can and will grow at an even faster rate. Without dramatic reductions in storage cost per gigabyte, the costs of storage growth will diminish or even cancel out virtualization productivity gains. Moreover, there is a near-direct relationship between storage cost per gigabyte and storage power consumption. Higher power consumption in many cases is an even bigger issue than increased storage acquisition costs. There are two "levers" that can be used to reduce storage cost per gigabyte (and storage power consumption): • Increase capacity utilization • Rebalance the storage media mix The pooling effect of virtualizing storage naturally increases storage capacity utilization: bigger pools mean better-managed allocation, resulting in less unused space. Better utilization will help, but even the best management systems will rarely increase utilization by more than 50 percent. This will not be enough by itself to counteract the incremental growth that comes with server virtualization. Additional productivity can be gained by changing the storage media mix. The key is to provide the storage performance required for each new application, but no more. For example, high-capacity enterprise hard drives are available in 3.5-inch and 2.5-inch form factors that dramatically reduce cost per gigabyte and watts per gigabyte at the cost of some performance. But many applications don't require higher-performance storage. • High-capacity 3.5-inch enterprise SAS and SATA drives can reduce cost per gigabyte by a magnitude for some applications. The efficient design of 7200-RPM drives dramatically reduces per-drive costs, and capacity per drive is two to three times higher than high-performance 10K-RPM and 15K-RPM enterprise drives. • High-capacity 2.5-inch enterprise drives are now readily available. For example, the Seagate® Constellation™ drive delivers up to 50 0GB, SAS and SATA interfaces, and an enterprise design that is from the ground up distinctly superior to notebook hard drives. Today's 2.5-inch drives lag their larger cousins in capacity, but they can reduce drive power consumption by up to 70 percent compared to 3.5-inch drives. Today's best-in-class 2.5-inch- and 3.5-inchbased storage systems offer tiered storage options. Tiered storage makes it possible to blend high-performance 10K-RPM and 15K-RPM hard drives with high-capacity 7200-RPM enterprise drives. Several systems available from vendors today will auto-migrate data between tiers over time in response to data activity level. 2