Introduction to Storage Networking
Storage Consolidation
Solution Requirements
For Storage Consolidation
• Disk consolidation:
– Reduce number of supported platforms
– Supports heterogeneous servers and protocols
– Offers flexibility in configuration
– Potential virtualization solution?
• Tape consolidation:
– Tape library sharing (“tape virtualization”)
– Software to manage the access to the library
– Supports heterogeneous servers
With storage consolidation we are looking to maximise the utilization of our
existing storage platforms by giving us the flexibility to allocate the correct
sized logical units to our heterogeneous application servers. These servers
can be running different operating systems from different vendors, but our
consolidated disk subsystem is able to accommodate all of these. By
consolidating our storage the average organization can increase its disk
utilization from 30% for direct attached storage up to 70% with SAN attached
storage.