SME Stack V0.1, Part 2 - Storage is Key

Storage is key to the virtual infrastructure. That's right, storage. For business applications network products, hypervisors and management tools all exist to interconnect what? Storage.

Need proof? First, the derivative product from a hypervisor-based computing platform (composite of OS, applications and related data) is a group of files. Second, hypervisor-based storage relies on reliable, target performance, network connected storage to facilitate migration, recovery and duplication (cloning, rapid provisioning, etc.) The network element will simply not be significant a factor in determining performance or utility when TCO is calculated. Third, storage is where hypervisor and non-hypervisor technologies meet in the middle. For some time, a significant number of businesses will need to live in the hybrid world of hardware and virtual computing. The only surviving common element will be storage.

SME Stack V0.1, Part 1 - Overview

Our consulting practice exists to develop and deliver scalable technology infrastructure products to small enterprise (10-100 employees). This often means pairing KVM, Oracle VM and/or VMWare hypervisor solutions with modular, scalable, redundant, fault-tolerant storage systems.

We are constantly battling the technology pyramid of performance, cost and features to satisfy the management and continuity needs of the customer. Often, it is the area of storage where the pyramid is the most strained, as hypervisor and management technologies have come down from their once stratospheric basis.

Who's getting it right? Let's move aside the selection of hypervisor software and concentrate on physical infrastructure. Two big names in infrastructure seem to be converging on the same ideas: Cisco and Sun Microsystems. These ideas are aligned with Solution Oriented's goal of "total commodity infrastructure" that leads to what Cisco calls the "Service Oriented Data Center."