The shifting tides of heterogeneous storage virtualization :: Wikibon

A few months ago I’d embarked on research concerning external virtualization, here called heterogeneous storage virtualization. I like that term better and the TLA, HSV, works pretty well too. 

The article points to the same drivers I’d identified in my research:

1. Tiered storage - in an effort to create a default tier 2 strategy and avoid expensive tier 1 platforms;
2. Migration capability - especially for customers facing a rolling financially-forced lease conversion every year or those with particularly frequent migrations due to acquisition strategies;
3. Storage consolidation - in an effort to pool heterogeneous storage assets;
4. VMware and server virtualization - to support backend storage virtualization for virtualized server environments.

So far, my research has focused on how the main players: IBM with SVC, EMC with Invista, Hitachi  with USVP (and HP which sells Hitachi built storage, customized to HP specs, but still using Hitachi technologies) with and LSI with Storage Virtualization Manager. In the past few weeks, HP has brought to market its own version of the LSI product, renaming it SVSP and adding some features and capabilities.

It’s very hard to compare how these products differ in delivering their functionality as the costs are fairly high, but Edison hopes to begin some testing in the next several months. For now, it looks like the market will have to depend upon what the sales folks say. But in the future, perhaps, Edison will have some nuts and bolts information to help organizations make more educated decisions.