• Improved management: – Definition of storage policies – Quality of storage services
– Reduces downtime due to upgrades
• Architecture for the future: – Scalability – Flexibility – Security
At its simplest level, storage virtualization is the process of organizing multiple physical disk objects into logical, or "virtual," entities to better manage capacity, automate procedures and increase performance. This ability to manage virtual pools of stored data, rather than physically manage individual disks, allows a range of necessary tasks to be performed more efficiently and without downtime.
For example, new storage can be added to keep up with capacity demands, or storage configurations can be changed to optimize performance or improve availability levels.