Of those that have deployed server virtualization, 66 percent cited a substantial increase in storage costs as the biggest problem they are facing. Nearly 40 percent say the storage infrastructure is either slowing application performance or limiting its availability, while more than 20 percent indicate that business continuity has become more difficult, according to the survey.
DataCore reports that despite hype surrounding cloud initiatives, a majority (73 percent) of organizations have yet to take advantage of cloud services for storage needs. However, 70 percent said access to more disk space would be the most important characteristic they would want from cloud-related storage.
Almost half (48 percent) of those surveyed are now using storage virtualization software with their server and desktop virtualization initiatives. Nearly three in four (74 percent) rely on it to improve disaster recovery and business continuity practices.
According to Jon Toigo, CEO of Toigo Partners International, said the figures in the survey underscore anecdotal issues facing IT managers. “The fundamental issue confounding hypervisor-based virtualization is storage. Inflexible storage fabrics are becoming a source of application performance pain and represent a single point of failure in the high availability story touted by hypervisor vendors,” Toigo says.
Toigo points out that virtualizing storage is less expensive than ripping out and replacing current storage infrastructure.
“Virtualized storage is also the key, going forward to successful desktop virtualization initiatives and to cloud service integrations. As more companies, compelled by reasons of cost or enhanced user mobility, begin to explore these technologies, hopefully the lessons learned around stalled server virtualization projects will not be forgotten.”
Valerie Valentine is senior editor for Information Management. You can follow her on Twitter at @va1va1entine or via email at valerie.valentine@sourcemedia.com.
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