Storage hypervisor
In information technology, a storage hypervisor is a computer program that can be transferred and used on different hardware, has extensive storage management functions, brings together heterogeneous storage capacities in a virtual pool and increases the availability , speed and utilization of the overall system.
A storage hypervisor can be installed on a hardware platform (x86 server) as well as on a virtual machine , where it resides in addition to supervisor software for virtual machines or exclusively. Similar to a hypervisor for virtual servers, the storage hypervisor software can be flexibly migrated to one or more virtual or physical machines.
Through the use of a storage hypervisor the utility and application of value may disk subsystems (disk subsystems) are increased in business by the incompatibilities of the hardware systems are eliminated with each vendor-specific administration software. Instead, integrated management functions for storage provision, data backup , replication and performance acceleration through caching can be applied to all hardware systems via the storage hypervisor .
In contrast to integrated software ( embedded software ) or the firmware of a disk controller, storage hypervisors are offered as a software suite or as an appliance . The administration, management and maintenance functions of the storage hypervisor are available in different storage topologies such as Storage Area Network (SAN), Direct Attached Storage (DAS) or for Unified Storage (SAN and NAS) , regardless of the manufacturer, model or technology of the storage hardware. to disposal. In addition to HDD technologies, solid state disks (SSD) are also integrated into the storage pool.
The storage hardware only limits the capacity and performance of the overall system through the use of a storage hypervisor. The advantage lies in the ability to flexibly and reversibly set up virtual storage drives on any exchangeable hardware without interrupting ongoing operations and to equip them centrally with different service qualities (performance, availability ) and storage services (auto-provisioning, replication) for the entire company network.
The term “storage hypervisor” is established because conceptually it is located one level above the supervisor and thus above the intelligence of a device-specific RAID controller , disk array or middleware for virtualization. The storage hypervisor is the further development of storage virtualization on a software basis and is described as a "comprehensive set of storage control and monitoring functions operating as a transparent virtual layer across consolidated disk pools to improve their availability, speed and utilization". The term was initially used in a narrower sense in specialist articles on data migration in SANs and to describe the hypervisor role in disaster recovery scenarios. In German IT specialist media, it appears in its overarching meaning from 2011.
Web links
- Technical article: Brief historical summary of storage virtualization
- Lecture slides - by Christian Baun - Mannheim University of Applied Sciences (PDF; 293 kB)
- Virtualisierungs-guide.de
- Virtualizationblog.com
- Datamation: Virtualization Overview
- InformationWeek's Storage Blog: Storage Virtualization Using The Hypervisor
- Storage Hypervisor Feature Set Graphic and Definition
Remarks
- ^ "Enterprise Strategy Group White Paper, page 5". Enterprise Strategy Group, Mark Peters, January 2011. (PDF; 195 kB) ( Memento of the original from March 30, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ "Hypervisor Glossary - Definition". Xen v2.0 for x86 Users' Manual (PDF; 234 kB). Xen.org on August 20, 2011. (PDF)
- ↑ Technical article storage virtualization: high availability for virtual storage infrastructures, M. Baumann, IT administrator, June 22, 2011
- ↑ "Storage Hypervisor Description". DataCore Software Website Page on Storage Hypervisor Feature Set.
- ↑ "ComputerWorld Article:". Published on November 23, 2010 and written by Lucas Mearian.
- ↑ "Search Disaster Recovery Article:". Published in SearchDisasterRecovery.com on June 23, 2011 and written by Todd Erickson.
- ^ "Storage hypervisor in German-language media". White Paper Downloads, storage-insider.de
