The New Virtues of Virtualization (continued)
To the extent that there is a choice of storage technology, virtualization may provide a boost to NAS.
The reason, according to Farid Neema, president of research firm Peripheral Concepts in Santa Barbara, Calif., is that virtualization addresses NAS's greatest weakness -- its scalability. Placing more than five or 10 NAS on a network can cause serious management and performance problems. "They each had separate operating systems and separate file systems -- it was a nightmare to manage," Neema says. "But virtualization has completely solved that problem. Now, you see only one file system, managed as one pool of storage."
As a result, while SAN was once the predominant storage technology, virtualization has put NAS almost on a par with it. The emergence of NAS as a solution equal in status to SAN is demonstrated, Neema says, by the recent spate of "consolidated" or "unified" storage solutions that allow storage administrators to manage both SAN and NAS from a single vantage point.
Another indicator of NAS' new appeal is found in Peripheral Concepts' recent survey of end users, which finds that the percentage of data stored on NAS is growing along with NAS virtualization. The number of sites storing more than 30 percent of their data on NAS has increased from 25 percent in 2004 to 44 percent in 2006.
The bottom line: If you are implementing storage virtualization, NAS' increased manageability may increase functionality and cut costs.
About the Author
Masha Zager, formerly the IT director of a government agency, is a freelance writer specializing in business and technology.
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