Creating a more efficient IT infrastructure is not some passing fad, it is an essential ingredient in today's business environment. Now that the possibilities for IT efficiency are known, there is no way to return to a care-free past...

1. White
Paper
Storage Virtualization for Efficient
Operations
With a Focus on IBM’s Capabilities
By Mark Peters, Senior Analyst
March, 2012
This ESG White Paper was commissioned by IBM
and is distributed under license from ESG.
© 2012, The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved

2. White Paper: St
W torage Virtualiz
zation for Effic
cient Operation
ns 2
Co
ontents
Efficiency is Not a Fad .........................................
....................
....................
....................
....................
............... 3
The Basic Need .......................................................
N ......................
..................... ..................... ................ 3
......................
The Move to Greater Server Efficienc ..................
t cy ..................... .....................
...................... ................ 3
......................
A Stark Con
ntrast to Stora ....................................
age ..................... .....................
...................... ................ 3
......................
Server Virtu
ualization Can Reflect Po
oorly on Stor
rage .............
....................
....................
....................
............... 4
Users of Server Virtualization Speak ......................
......................
..................... ..................... ................ 5
......................
Storage Virt
tualization Can Help ..........................
C ....................
....................
....................
....................
............... 6
Advantages of a Virtualized Storage Pool ..............
s P ......................
..................... .....................
......................
................ 6
IBM’s Storag Virtualiza
ge ation Leadership ............
....................
....................
....................
....................
............... 7
SAN Volume Controller ........................................... ......................
..................... ..................... ................ 7
......................
XIV .............
............................................................... ..................... .....................
...................... ................ 7
......................
Storwize V7 7000 ....................................................... ..................... .....................
...................... ................ 8
......................
The Bigger Truth .................................................
T ....................
....................
....................
....................
............... 9
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ces
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© 2012, The Enterprise Stra
ategy Group, In All Rights R
nc. Reserved.

3. White Paper: St
W torage Virtualiz
zation for Effic
cient Operation
ns 3
Ef
fficiency is Not a Fad
i F
Th Basic Nee
he ed
Cre
eating a more efficient IT infrastructure is not some passing fad— is an esse ntial ingredie in today’s business
e e —it ent
en
nvironment. Moreover, foc on efficien has increased during t past few y
M cus ncy the years of diffic economic
cult c
conditions. With flat or decli
ining budgets all organiza
s, ations have be asked to “do more wit less,” and while
een th
bu
udgets are begginning to reccover, the need for efficiency does not dissipate.
No that the possibilities for IT efficiency are known, there is no w to return to a care-free past. Even w
ow y way e when times
are flush, an inh
e herently effic ucture enables organizatio ns to maximize their profi and make better use
cient infrastru its
of resources an staff. It is simple logic, therefore, tha in the best of all worlds, optimum eff
nd at , ficiency should become
part of the fabr of both business proces
ric sses and IT inf
frastructures .
Th Move to Greater Serv Efficienc
he G ver cy
To see the value of greater efficiency in li
o e iving color, on need look no further th the serve virtualizatio
ne han er on
rev
volution. IT organizations were struggling under the weight of pr
e roliferating seervers, each typically housing a single
ap
pplication. Serrver farms of hundreds, thousands, eve tens of tho
en ousands of ind dividual mach
hines became nearly
e
im
mpossible to manage. Serve virtualizatio turned tha idea on its head. Consolidating multi applicatio
m er on at iple on
woorkloads on fa fewer hard
ar dware platforms has revolu utionized the ability for us to be effi
e sers icient in term of
ms
ompute-abilit 1. For many organizatio server hardware has b
“co ty” ons, been reduced by 50%, 60% even 80%, e
d %, enabling
bo capital and operational cost savings. As a result, server virtua lization–whic only a few years ago see
oth d ch emed
thr
rilling, unusual, and even somewhat ge
s eeky –is now a staple of th e data center Excitement over its value as an IT
r. t
str
rategy has no diminished, a fact that is borne out in ESG’s most recent IT Spe
ot , s n ending Intentiions research As Figure
h.
1sshows, the increased use of server virtu
o ualization is once again (fo the third ye in a row) t top IT priority
o or ear the
according to organizations we surveyed in late 2011.2
w
A Stark Contra to Storag
ast ge
Server virtualiza
ation surely demonstrates the benefit of data cente efficiency a renders th unyielding growth of
d s o er and he g
data volumes— reality from which IT cannot seem to escape—eve more cons
—a m o en spicuous. Not only is there a natural
t e
ap
pplication grow occurring but social media, web 2.0 application smartpho nes, and tablets enable an onslaught
wth g, m ns, n
of both content creation and consumptio This has re
t d on. esulted in preessure for perrformance as well as capac city. Not
on are organizations using the massive amounts of data collected constantly b websites a barcode r
nly d d by and readers,
bu that data is also then fed into analytic engines th spit out th right products targeted to the right buyers. Big
ut d cal hat he d
data sets, as we as requirem
ell ments for hig application availability, data protecti
gh n ion, and regulatory compli iance have
attremendous impact on dat growth.
ta
Fo the most pa organizations have bee addressing this particu lar challenge simply by adding storage capacity. If
or art, en g
yo need data copies for ana
ou c alytics, you ge a server (p
et tual) and som storage. A
physical or virt me Adding infrastructure
sta
acks for testin and develo
ng opment, remo replicatio backup, et seemed like a good ide at the time but has
ote on, tc., ea e,
res
sulted in para silos of in
allel nfrastructure that keep gro owing yet are mostly poor utilized. Th response t growth
e rly his to
has created tremendous ine efficiencies in the storage domain, resullting in not on underutili
d nly ized resource but also
es
oft with un-s
ten sharable stora capacity stranded behind specific u
age s uses. In some cases, upwar of 70% of storage
rds
capacity is sittin idle, locked behind a pa
ng d articular serve or purpose while anoth silo might be running o of
er e, her t out
capacity. Buying more storag is such a waste when unused capaciity is sitting a round! In som cases, storage has
g ge w me
be
ecome the poster child for inefficiency, driving up ac cquisition cost consuming data center floor space, energy,
ts, g r
and increased management time.
m
1
Th constructed word is being us to convey no just ‘regular’ efficiency in term of reducing t number of se
his sed ot e ms the ervers (and ther
refore also
spa energy, and cooling demand but also oth elements suc as greater flex
ace, d ds), her ch xibility, better re
esponsiveness, a reduced com
and mplexity.
2
So
ource: ESG Rese
earch Report: 20 IT Spending Intentions Surve January 2012
012 ey, 2.
© 2012, The Enterprise Stra
ategy Group, In All Rights R
nc. Reserved.

4. White Paper: St
W torage Virtualiz
zation for Effic
cient Operation
ns 4
Server virtualiza
ation and trad
ditional stora architectu seem to be a gigantic mismatch.
age ures
Figure 1. Top Ten IT Prior
p rities for 2012
2
Which of the follow would y consider t be your or
h wing you to rganization's most
importa IT priorities over the n
ant next 12-18 mo
onths? (Perce of respon
ent ndents,
N=614, ten responses a
n accepted)
Incr
reased use of server virtualization 30%
mprove data b
Im backup and recovery 30%
Major application deploy
yments or upg
grades 29%
Manage data growth
M g 27%
Information security init
tiatives 27%
Business continuity/disaster recovery pro
B r ograms 25%
Data center consolidation
c 2
24%
De
esktop virtualization 23
3%
Mobile wo
orkforce enablement 22%
%
Deployin a "private cloud" infrastructure
ng c 22%
%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40%
S
Source: Enterpr Strategy Group, 2012.
rise
Se
erver Virt
tualizatio Can Re
on eflect Poo on St
orly torage
Server virtualizaation lets phy
ysical servers host multiple application workloads. V
e Virtual machin (VM) can be moved
nes
beetween physic machines without inter
cal rrupting operrations, VMs c be spun u in minutes to address a particular
can up s
neeed, and organizations can save tremen ndous amount of money b having to b manage and software
ts by buy, e-license-
proovision fewer servers. This makes the IT organization much more flexible and responsive. D
r s T e Dramatic imp
provements
in utilization rat and more efficient ene
tes e ergy consump ption can crea significant savings, as c reduction in both
ate t can ns
ma aintenance an software licensing.
nd
Server virtualizaation truly shifted the IT world on its ax enabling o
w xis, organizations to improve a
s application av
vailability
and scale quickly, as well as bringing remote replicatio into the re
on ealm of possib
bility for many who could not afford
the like-for-like infrastructur that was previously required. The ad
e e re dvances that sserver virtualization has ge
enerated
hig
ghlight the inadequacies of other infras
o structure commponents in th type of en
his nvironment. A Aggregated se erver
woorkloads put tremendous stress on both networking and storage . In addition, while you ma be able to move a
t s g ay
running applica ation between servers, the storage doesn’t automat ically go with it. Virtualizin the compu side but
n e h ng ute
no the storage side prevent the comple agility and truly utility- like resource provisioning that users ar looking
ot e ts ete d g re
for Unfortunat for IT, use are becom accustom to access an applic
r. tely ers ming med sing cation server pretty much instantly,
wh results in ever-higher service-level expectations If the storag cannot ma
hich n s. ge atch what the servers can do, those
e
service levels caannot be met t.
© 2012, The Enterprise Stra
ategy Group, In All Rights R
nc. Reserved.

5. White Paper: St
W torage Virtualiz
zation for Effic
cient Operation
ns 5
Us of Serve Virtualization Speak
sers er
When 21st-century server te echnology me 40-year-o storage d esign, it is—t put it mildl
eets old to ly—a bit of a cultural
and technical clash. As a result, storage im
mplementatio can preve IT organiz
ons ent zations from eexpanding their virtual
server deploym ments in the ways that they would like to. That is an easy, even glib, assertion, but it is prov by
w y ven
wh IT manage revealed in ESG research focused on server virtu
hat ers i ualization3. Fir it is clear that the mor a user
rst, re
rtualizes their environment, the more benefits that user will inva riably gain. ESG’s research segmented server
vir r b u h
vir
rtualization us into thre categories based on the maturity of t
sers ee e their implementations—this was defined by the
sco of deploy
ope yments, virtual-to-physical consolidatio ratio, perce
on entage of virt machines running in a
tual s
prooduction envvironment (as opposed to test and deve
t elopment), an penetratio of server virtualization i
nd on into
prooduction and mission-criti applicatio It quickly became clea that basic b
d ical ons. y ar benefits such as reducing aacquisition
costs and floor space require ements were benefits shared by organiizations at alll levels of the maturity mo
e odel.
Hoowever, only those organiz
t zations that had been able to expand th virtualiza
h e heir ation deploym ments were
experiencing higher level be enefits such as improving disaster recov
s d very, increasin application availability, and
ng n ,
speeding applic cation provisioning.
To no one’s gre surprise, therefore, exp
o eat panding serve virtualizatio is a high p
er on priority for ma organizat
any tions, and
mo of the research respon
ost ndents had immmediate plan to virtualiz more appli cations, cons
ns ze solidate more VMs on
e
each physical machine, and move server virtualization increasingly into product
m n tion operation Unfortuna
ns. ately, many
of them were also experienc roadbloc to virtualiz
cing cks zation expans sion, and storrage impleme entations wer often
re
the culprit. The storage challenges associ
e iated with ser
rver virtualiza
ation cited by respondents included the capital
y s e
cost of new storage infrastruucture (36%), scalability pr
, roblems (25% operationa costs of new storage inf
%), al w frastructure
(24
4%), and the impact on ov verall volume of storage ca apacity (21%) . When asked what would help them to expand
d d o
the virtual ser
eir rver implementations, the most-mentio oned needs w were not just more training but better s
g, storage
capabilities—faaster provisioning, better scalability, mo use of virt
s ore tualized stora and better storage migration
age,
too (see Figur 2).
ols re
Figure 2. Storage Develop
pments That Would Enable Wider Serve Virtualizatio Usage
W e er on
From a storage infrastructure perspe
ective, which of the follow
wing
dev
velopments do you believ need to tak place in or
d ve ke rder to enable more
wid
despread server virtualiza
ation usage in your organi
n ization? (Perc
cent of
res
spondents, NN=190, multip responses accep
ple s
Additional tra
aining for IT st
taff 33%
Faster stor
rage provisioning 28%
Mor scalable storage infrastru
re ucture to supp
port
25%
rapid virtual machine growth
Increase use of stora virtualization
ed age 25%
Better storage migration to
e ools 25%
0% 5%
% 10% 15
5% 20% 2
25% 30% 35%
S
Source: Enterpr Strategy Group, 2011.
rise
3
So
ource: ESG Reseearch Report, Th Evolution of Server Virtualizat
he S tion, November 2010. All server virtualization re
r esearch referenc come
ces
from this report.
© 2012, The Enterprise Stra
ategy Group, In All Rights R
nc. Reserved.

6. White Paper: St
W torage Virtualiz
zation for Effic
cient Operation
ns 6
St
torage Virtualizati Can Help
ion H
Giv this vexin situation, many organiz
ven ng m zations are loo
oking for mor flexible and scalable sto
re d orage implem
mentations.
What server vir
rtualization de
eployments need is storag that:
n ge
• Helps to increase ap
pplication availability instead of diminis
shing it.
• Promot flexibility instead of hin
tes ndering it.
• Speeds provisioning instead of de
elaying it.
Virrtualizing stor tially accomplished in the same way tha servers are virtualized: the physical hardware
rage is essent at e
and disk resour rces are logica separated from the da services. W virtualized storage, a pool of flexib
ally d ata With ble,
consolidated re esources with a common management interface is b
m built using cap
pacity from m
multiple arrays s—arrays
tha can have different specifications, sof
at d ftware featur and some
res, etimes can ev be from d
ven different vend dors.
Stoorage virtualization enable organizatio to improv performan ce and increa capacity w
es ons ve ase without disrupting
opperations. Bec cause storage is not dedica
e ated to any sp
pecific server or applicatio it creates a much more flexible
r on, e
and responsive environment while also in
t ncreasing utilization rates. Virtualizatio can also sim
. on mplify storage tiering,
e
another good efficiency strategy: its bene are twof
e efits fold: firstly, m
more expensiv tier 1 stora can be us for
ve, age sed
fre
equently acce essed “hot” da while less expensive, capacity-optim
ata s c mized storage can be used for “cold” data.
e d
Secondly, users can get away from a “def
s fault” or “one
e-size-fits-all” storage appr
” roach (which is all-too-often tier 1)
and move to a storage mix that better me their app
s eets plication need ds.
Ad
dvantages of a Virtualize Storage Pool
ed P
With storage virtualization, the data serv
t vices provided to users are no longer lim
d e mited by hard
dware charact
teristics,
and with tiering IT can matc the perform
g, ch mance and av aracteristics w data valu to streamline costs.
vailability cha with ue
Insstead of silos of storage ca
apacity that cannot be shared, a virtual ized storage pool can prov a numbe of
vide er
beenefits:
• Reclaim stranded storage cap
ming d pacity. Unused capacity no becomes p of the vir
ow part rtual storage pool and is
available to any serv
vers, users, or applications accessing th pool. In add
r s he dition, when storage is no longer
o
needed it becomes part of the po again to be used elsew
d p ool b where.
• Consoli
idating storag managem
ge ment. Storage virtualization centralizes m
n management of all storage
t e
resourc eliminatin multiple to and proc
ces, ng ools cesses for diff
ferent arrays. Pulling stora managem
. age ment all
togethe under one umbrella makes the envir
er ronment more reliable, pro
e oviding less o
opportunity fo
or
adminis
strative error
rs.
• Advanc software features. With storage vir
ced rtualization, h
high-end feattures (which a also very often
are
econommically-efficie too) such as thin provis
ent a sioning, snapsshots, and remote replicattion that com with the
me
storage system can be shared wit arrays that don’t have t
e th t those feature This can ex
es. xtend the use life of
eful
storage devices as well as maximize the return on investme In many cases, it can prevent or at least
e w n ent. t
delay additional storrage purchase
es.
• Green operations. By improving utilization and so reducing the number of physical m
o B g r machines, sto
orage
virtualization reduce data center floor space, power, and cooling requi
es , irements.
• Non-dis sruptive migr
ration. Data movement is one of the m
m most common and disruptive storage tasks. it is
n
done fo many reaso perhaps the most com
or ons, mmon of whic is to addre performan problems Storage
ch ess nce s.
virtualization enable data to be moved non-d
es disruptively a nd so turns a irksome bu necessary t
an ut task into
someth to be welcomed.
hing
• Total co of owners
ost ship. Storage virtualization replaces a f
e n fragmented e
environment,- in which silo of SAN,
- os
NAS, virtual tape, et all operate with separa storage ne
tc., e ate management tools—with a
etworks and m t
centralized, flexible storage pool. Equipment, managemen t, energy, ma aintenance, and licensing c
costs are
reduced, while stora is used more efficiently.
age
© 2012, The Enterprise Stra
ategy Group, In All Rights R
nc. Reserved.

7. White Paper: St
W torage Virtualiz
zation for Effic
cient Operation
ns 7
IB
BM’s Storage Virtu
ualization Leadership
n
Th old adage that “nobody ever got fired for buying IBM” is roote in the unde
he t I ed erlying trust h by users that IBM’s
held
solutions do wh they prom
hat mise. The com mpany does ju about eve rything in IT, and it invaria does it w The
ust ably well.
on downside of this scenar is that IBM doesn’t nec
nly rio M cessarily put i ts storage solutions front and center—
—which is
un
nfortunate, be
ecause what it has to offer is really quit special, and highly valua
i r te d able for userss.
Ke IBM storage virtualizatio products are the SAN Volume Contro
ey on a V oller (SVC) storage virtuali
ization system and the
m
XIV and Storwiz V7000 stor
V ze rage systems. SVC is a stor
. rage virtualiza
ation system. Storwize V7 7000 and XIV are disk
sys
stems with ad dvanced virtu capabilitie that help an
ual es nalyze, adapt to, and impr
t rove applicati performance while
ion
maining easy to use. These intelligent storage solutions help use rs to maintain application availability a
rem e s n and
pe
erformance le evels in dynam virtual and cloud-based infrastructu
mic d d ures, and are good exampl of IBM’s
les
commitment to “Smarter Co
o omputing.” Smarter Comp puting is abou seeing the issues, and hence the infrastructure,
ut
olistically; des
ho signing strateg and solut
gies tions that ena breakthr
able rough service delivery - op
e ptimizing syst tems for
the workloads they support; and making infrastructure flexible, int
e t ; telligent, and interconnect ted. All of the
ese
ap
pproaches and technologie improve eff
d es ficiency and flexibility and provide a responsive IT in
f d nfrastructure that is
based on virtua alization, cons
solidation, an automation
nd n—essential f many env
for vironments, inncluding cont temporary
clo deployme
oud ents.
SA Volume Controller
AN C
Th goal of SVC is to provide a virtual storage pool wit a single po of control that manage all storage resources
he C e th oint l es
to the best advantage of the user’s business—quickly, efficiently, in real-time, a without in
e , n and ncreasing
administrative complexity or cost. SVC is a modular, highly scalable system of re
c e edundant pairs of storage engines.
Alo with cach and both Fibre Channe and iSCSI po
ong he, el orts, the syste scales to s
em support up to 1,024 host s
o servers and
32 of virtualized storage capacity. In ad
2PB c ddition to inn
novative supp for solid- state drives t
port that can scale out for
e
peerformance, SVC includes IBM’s System Storage Easy Tier function
S y nality which m
makes the mo efficient u of the
ost use
solid-state stora by autom
age matically ident tifying and moving highly aaccessed data to that storrage. Easy Tie also
er
supports solid-s state disk in the virtualized arrays, and because it is tightly integr
t d rated can spe data migr
eed ration and
repplication func
ctionality. SVC capacity pooling increase utilization and helps ins
C es sulate host ap
pplications fro storage
om
changes to improve applicat availabilit The consis
tion ty. stent manage ement interfa minimizes administrati effort.
ace s ive
Insstead of havin to operate multiple inte
ng e erfaces for storage configu uration and mmanagement, SVC enables users to
draamatically inccrease the productivity of storage administrators. SV also enabl a stretche configuration with
VC les ed
clu
usters suppor rting storage and servers in different da centers.
a n ata
SV offers plug-ins to both VMware vCen and Microsoft System Center Oper
VC V nter m rations Manager for even g greater
ma anagement co onsolidation. SVC features are built to complement the server virtualization p
s c paradigm. Pro ovisioning is
fas because it is a non-disru
st uptive software operation. Non-disrupt data migr
. tive storage pool means that
ration in the s
funnctions such as VMware vMotion are not stymied. SVC also supp
n S ports the VMw ware vStorage APIs (VAAI) so that
e
sto
orage can offload some tasks from VMw ware to free up server reso
u server virtualization, SVC e
ources. Like s enables
dif
fferent physic configurat
cal tions at produ
uction and DR sites but cre
R eates the sam virtual con
me nfiguration at each. And,
in the same way that virtual servers can be deployed on various typ of server hardware, SV enables a
b o pes VC
heeterogeneous storage environment.
XIV
V
nterprise-class XIV storage is grid-based, automatically spreading data across a disk drives to optimize a
En s all application
erformance an eliminate hot spots. Its grid architec
pe nd cture is purpo
ose-built for v
virtual and clo infrastruc
oud ctures.
Co
onsolidated vi irtual workloa by definition, create increasingly ra
ads, andom I/O pr rofiles becaus many diffe
se erent
pplications are sending reads and writes The grid str
ap e s. ructure was ddesigned to use massive pa arallelism to o
optimize
ndom I/O, so it’s faster by nature. In ad
ran ddition, perfo
ormance can g grow along w capacity, eliminating that trade-
with
off XIV’s self-tu
f. uning ability enables high performance using a comb
e p bination of lo
ow-cost, high--capacity driv to
ves
red
duce TCO as well as a soph
w histicated SSD cache layer. This strategy differs from trying to improve performance
D y m
© 2012, The Enterprise Stra
ategy Group, In All Rights R
nc. Reserved.

8. White Paper: St
W torage Virtualiz
zation for Effic
cient Operation
ns 8
with a tier of high-speed, low capacity spinning disk dr
w rives that is c
constantly und
der-utilized, a it is the k
and kind of new
ide customers have come to expect from IBM.
ea s t m
XIV is built for high reliability and availability with redu
V h y undancy and proactive sel lf-healing. Built-in manage
ement tools
are extremely simple to use, and arrays seamlessly sca in capacity cache, pro cessing powe and host
e s , s ale y, er,
connectivity. XIV even has fr iPad and iPhone apps (XIV Mobile D
ree i ( Dashboard) w which can be u used to monit XIV
tor
sys
stems from anywhere. Oth built-in ad
her dvanced features include s space-efficien snapshots, global mirro
nt , oring for
rep
plication and disaster reco overy, consisttency groups, thin provisio
oning, and aut tomated data migration. In addition,
a
the product is deeply integra
e d ated with VMMware solutions and APIs, a IBM and V
as VMware have a long-standing
partnership. No only does integration with vCenter Site Recovery Manager sim
ot mplify site failo
over, but som VMware
me
fun
nctions can be offloaded to the XIV arra through VA for proce
t ay AAI essing efficien These are features tha
ncy. e at
customers shou expect fro their stora vendors because they help get mor from the virtualized env
uld om age b re vironment.
Sto
orwize V700
00
Fo the mid-ran IBM Storwize V7000 tackles perfor
or nge, rmance and e efficiency in a virtual world with built-in thin
d n
pro
ovisioning, Ea Tier autom
asy mated storage tiering, and storage virtu
d ualization. Th new Storwize V7000 Un
he nified
stem can support file and block storage with fully integrated man
sys e nagement to handle the m massive growt ofth
un
nstructured da without requiring a dif
ata fferent storag silo. These systems scal up (and Sto
ge le orwize V7000 block
0
stems scale out) easily to accommodate the rapidly changing nee of virtual and cloud-ba
sys o a eds ased environm ments, and
Sto
orwize V7000 Unified inclu
0 udes automat policy-driv tiering to optimize performance an cost while simplifying
tic, ven o nd
administration.
Inttegration with VAAI lets th Storwize V7000 and Sto
h he orwize V7000 Unified take some of the load from servers to
fre up process resources Improved mirroring lets organization balance network costs w recovery point
ee sing s. m ns with y
obbjectives. Exte
ernal storage virtualization enables non
n n-disruptive m
migration from legacy and non-IBM arra or
m ays
allows them to be retained and consolida
a ated—anothe efficiency m
er measure desig gned for inveestment prote ection.
Snapshots and replication ar easy to ma
re anage for effic
cient protectiion. Storwize V7000 Unifie also suppo IBM’s
ed orts
ne Active Clou Engine, de
ew ud cy-based file management for backup a
elivering polic m archiving, and migration. In today’s
d n
effficiency-focus world, org
sed ganizations can reduce CA APEX and OPE with conso
EX olidation, virtu
ualization, an
nd
automation. Sto orwize V7000 and Storwize V7000 Unif have bee designed fo exactly tho needs.
0 fied en or ose
© 2012, The Enterprise Stra
ategy Group, In All Rights R
nc. Reserved.

9. White Paper: St
W torage Virtualiz
zation for Effic
cient Operation
ns 9
Th Bigger Truth
he r
Fo the most pa organizations have had a fairly cava
or art, d alier attitude towards storrage. It’s not t
that IT wasn’t unaware
t
of its rising cost
ts—it’s more that it didn’t see any othe ways to add
er dress the prooblems with w which it was f
faced. But
server virtualizaation changed all that, dem
d monstrating a way to oper rate with grea efficiency and less wa
ater aste.
Th recent flooding in Thaila that creat a disk driv shortage h been a ne rude awakening. Suddenly, it has
he and ted ve has ew,
beecome more expensive—even supply co
e onstrained—f additiona l storage silos to be the an
for s nswer to ever problem.
ry
Th is a wake-u call for tho who are willing to see it. As long as storage infra
his up ose w astructures re
emain inflexib and
ble
ineefficient, any disruptive force can quick overwhelm an IT infrast
kly m tural disasters are not the only types
tructure. Nat s
of interference– –they may als come in th form of sud
so he dden financia problems, r
al regulatory neeeds, and unfo oreseen
competitive thr reats that will require a prompt response. Only if a s
storage enviroonment is built on a founddation of
effficiency and flexibility will IT organizatio be able to handle thes problems.
f ons o se
Th efficiency and cost savin of the virt
he a ngs aradigm have been proven in stunning f
tualization pa n fashion on th server
he
sid of things. Storage can–a should–p
de S and ame types of benefits. IBM SVC, XIV, a Storwize V7000
provide the sa M’s and
off benefits that match the efficiency needs of today organizatiions, and are part of IBM’s ongoing leadership in
fer e n y’s s
cre
eating a Smar Planet through Smarte Computing The econom and opera
rter er g. mic ational value of virtualizing storage is
cle So, for IT users that wa to spend more time th
ear. ant hinking about the business services the deliver and less about
t s ey d
the boxes unde
e erneath, stora virtualizat is the wa to go. It is , if you will, “S
age tion ay “Smarter Stora “
age.
© 2012, The Enterprise Stra
ategy Group, In All Rights R
nc. Reserved.

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