By Nimish Shelat, Product Manager for HP Storage Essentials Storage Resource Management (SRM) software

Hi again,

I've been thinking about virtualization clouds, specifically as it relates to server-storage visibility. Here're some of my thoughts, would love to hear what you've experienced in the area as well.

It's true that server virtualization technologies (eg., VMware's ESX) bring several huge benefits to the enterprise; but let's not overlook that these technologies  also create some challenging dynamics in the storage environment.

Specifically, vendors like VMware and Microsoft recommend that all hypervisors use shared storage (i.e. SAN) to take advantage of dynamic application scaling technologies like Vmotion, LiveMotion respectively. Virtualization has dramatically increased network based storage within the enterprise. In fact, several storage analysts predict that 50% of new storage purchases are driven by server virtualization initiatives. 

Gone is the well understood "server - SAN - storage array" interrelationship; now we have additional virtual machine abstractions like VMFS (virtual machine files system), VMDK (virtual machine disks), virtual HBA's  to add to the complexity of the server-storage dependency. This complexity makes it hard for the server and storage team to control and make changes to their infrastructure. It raises several difficult questions, such as:

• How much of WHAT is used?
• What is underutilized and what can be reclaimed?
• Do I have virtual servers not-under-management in my environment ?
• Are these servers consuming expensive storage resources?

Without good answers to these questions, your enterprise will not use its storage resources effectively and you'll inevitably see a dramatic increase in storage budgets and purchase needs.

Another challenge introduced by virtualization is around speed. The enhanced agility of virtualization demands faster storage automation. With virtualization in place, you can no longer accept long latencies in the storage provisioning process. Your customers expect storage provisioning to be done quickly and in a repeatable way; the visionary customers are in fact, expecting coordinated server and storage provisioning solutions. 

Here's where HP Storage Essentials SRM software can help. It makes storage configurations and resources visible again, creating benefits such as:

• Comprehensive visibility into VM - storage dependencies
• Accurate storage resource capacity management
• Best in class Reporting and Dashboard
• Automated and error-free provisioning of storage resources to VMware server
• Virtual Server to Storage Array performance management

HP Operations Orchestration is a run book automation technology that orchestrates end-to-end IT processes. It provides out-of-the-box integration with Storage Essentials. By providing the automation and the orchestration engine, Storage Essentials provides its customers to fully automate their virtual infrastructure management. 

Learn more on how HP Storage Essentials can help better manage storage in a virtual environment here (white paper titled: Managing storage in the virtual data centre: A white paper on HP Storage Essentials support for VMware host virtualisation). .

www.hp.com/go/storageessentials and www.hp.com/go/SEPE 

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