Storage hypervisors tout faster, cheaper storage for cloud services

Virtualisation of both servers and desktops is putting unexpectedly high loads on the underlying storage, leading to private cloud services such as VDI needing far more storage than planned in order to provide decent performance, according to storage specialist Virsto Software.

The company made the claim as it announced a version of its virtualisation-aware storage software for VMware. It said that the high loads were a result of virtual computing making it much harder to optimise storage I/O because there are so many more I/O flows involved – from perhaps eight to 12 virtual servers, or as many as 50 or 70 virtual desktops, on one physical server.

Virsto CEO Mark Davis said that its storage hypervisor software - called Virsto for VDI, vSphere Edition - was analogous to VMware in that it abstracted the storage, breaking the connection between the logical device and the physical hardware. It also supports thin-provisioning, where a storage volume only occupies the physical space its data needs, whatever its nominal or logical size, it supports heterogeneous storage hardware, and it integrates with vCenter to enable self-service bulk provisioning of virtual machines, he said.

Davis added that for modern data centres and private clouds, it was essential to be VM-centric and to implement the storage hypervisor within the server hypervisor, not within an array or appliance. "Virsto fundamentally changes the economics of storage in virtualised environments, delivering high performance with storage space efficiency," he declared, adding that the software is priced at £1750 per host.

Virsto is not the only company to offer a storage hypervisor, however. Another company targeting this area is DataCore Software, which last week announced a new VM-specific version 8.1 of its pioneering storage virtualisation product SANsymphony-V. While Virsto currently supports the Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware hypervisors, DataCore noted that it also supported the Citrix platform.

“The sprawl and multiplication of storage systems and the rising number of speciality devices are now the norm. The intelligence of a storage hypervisor provides a strategic advantage to managing the many as one,” said George Teixeira, DataCore's president and CEO. “SANsymphony-V enables users to take control of how their storage infrastructure evolves versus being subject to the dictates of point-in-time decisions.”