VM-aware storage
VM-Aware Storage ( VAS ) is data storage specially designed to manage storage for virtual machines (VMs) in a data center . The goal is to offer storage that is easier to use compared to general purpose storage and that is optimized to work with VMs. VM-Aware Storage allows storage to be managed as an integral part of a VM, rather than as a Logical Unit Number (LUN) or volume that is configured and managed separately.
VM-Aware Storage is often used in conjunction with other VM-aware components and processes such as VM-Aware networks , VM-Aware backups, and VM-Aware virus scanning . VM-Aware Storage has some similarities with software-defined networking and can benefit from it, but differs from the latter in that SDN provides physical technology that can be adjusted and set up via software, whereas VM-Aware Storage is designed for virtual machines.
background
The use of server - virtualization since publication of the hypervisor risen sharply VMware ESX in 2,001th The International Data Corporation (IDC) estimates that more virtual than physical machines have been set up since 2009.
The ability to combine applications that run on tens of servers on one physical machine with a hypervisor has resulted in enormous cost savings in terms of both devices and automated management of the virtual servers. With these advantages, many companies have implemented the “virtualization first” guideline since 2010, which states that all new server setups should be virtual, unless there are specific reasons against it and in favor of using a physical server.
Since the costs of server hardware could be reduced through virtualization, the storage systems became the dominant factor for the costs and complexity of virtual infrastructures. In almost all virtual system management tools of the early 2000s, computing resources, such as CPU and main memory, were configured and managed separately from memory resources. Server resources were often managed by a different team than the storage infrastructure. Configuring the servers and storage systems separately and getting them to work together often required coordinated, extensive planning, integration and troubleshooting.
Emergence
To increase the manageability of storage, storage system vendors began to make their solutions more compatible with the surrounding virtual components (often called virtual infrastructure). Initial improvements consisted of scripts and plug-ins for virtual infrastructures to make common workflows, such as allocating memory to VMs, less complicated. As a result, these tasks became easier to implement.
In order to achieve further advantages and to give virtual infrastructures the possibility to better utilize the underlying storage system functions such as snapshots , cloning (writable snapshots), replication and Quality of Service (QoS), hypervisor manufacturers began to develop new storage protocols and extensions (VAAI, StorageLink) to publish and implement to manage storage in virtual environments.
Although these early steps improved the usability and efficiency of storage within virtual infrastructures, they did not take into account the fundamental separation between virtual infrastructures and storage systems. Since virtual infrastructures are designed to manage VMs, storage systems are designed to manage LUNs and partitions that are not directly related to VMs.
Independent of VMware, various startups also began to offer VM-aware storage products using existing interfaces for virtual infrastructure management. These solutions are designed to support the same VM abstractions and allow for granular memory management at the VM level.
Comparison with universal storage
General purpose storage systems were designed with storage protocols such as SCSI , iSCSI , Network File System (NFS), and Server Message Block (SMB) in mind, which existed long before virtualization came about. As a result, their basic administrative units are LUNs and volumes that have little to do with VMs. Universal storage systems are largely configured and managed independently of the virtual infrastructure. Administrators map the abstractions of the VM onto the storage systems. You then need to manage these mappings and create policies and processes for translating operations on VMs into the corresponding operations on LUNs and partitions.
For example, because there are no standard protocols for creating and deleting LUNs and volumes, most virtual infrastructures store many VMs in a single LUN or volume to balance provisioning and management overhead. Since general storage systems implement most of the storage management functions, such as monitoring, snapshots, cloning, replication, and QoS, for LUNs and volumes instead of VMs and virtual disks, this means that storage systems lose the ability to perform these operations on individual VMs.
Individual evidence
- ↑ David Y. Zhu, Erika Chin: Detection of VM-Aware Malware . In: Technical report , UC Berkeley, December 2007. Archived from the original on September 7, 2012 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. . Retrieved June 25, 2012.
- ↑ Kate Greene: TR10: Software-Defined Networking . In: Technology Review , MIT, March – April 2009. Retrieved June 25, 2012.
- ↑ Steven Herrod: Interop and the software-defined data center . In: cto.vmware.com , VMware, May 2012. Retrieved June 25, 2012.
- ↑ Michelle Bailey: The Economics of Virtualization: Moving Toward an Application-Based Cost Model . In: Research sponsored by VMware , International Data Corporation, November 2009. Archived from the original on May 10, 2012 Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Retrieved June 25, 2012.
- ↑ Jeffrey Burt: Enterprises Thinking Virtualization First . In: eWeek.com , International Data Corporation, April 2010. Retrieved June 25, 2012.
- ↑ VMware Knowledge Base: vStorage APIs for Array Integration FAQ , VMware. Retrieved June 25, 2012.
- ↑ Citrix Developer Network: What is StorageLink? . In: XenServer Best Practices Citrix StorageLink , Citrix. Retrieved June 25, 2012.
- ↑ Stephen Foskett: The I / O Blender Part 1: Ye Olde Storage I / O Path , blog.fosketts.net. May 2012. Retrieved June 27, 2012.
- ↑ Stephen Foskett: The I / O Blender Part 3: Behold the Power of the Demultiplexer, blog.fosketts.net. May 2012. Retrieved June 27, 2012.
