Storage: Virtualization’s wallflower?

DataCore Software, known for its storage virtualization software, has released a survey comprising over 450 IT organizations across North America and Europe, “The State of Virtualization.” The findings can be a little disturbing, especially to a company who creates a product that many medium and large enterprise IT orgs are leaving out of their virtualization plans: Storage. The study found that 43 percent had mistaken the impact storage would have on server and desktop virtualization or had shied away from a virtualization project because storage-related costs were too high.

Delayed virtualization projects weren’t the only downside to this apparent misunderstanding of storage virtualization costs; even among those who had already deployed server virtualization, 66 percent view the increase in storage costs as their biggest problem. Higher costs doesn’t mean higher quality, either. Almost 40 percent reported unhappiness with their storage infrastructure due to slowed or limited availability for applications. To exacerbate the decreased performance, 22 percent of IT admins feel locked-in to their storage hardware provider, with about 40 percent of respondents using two different storage systems from the same vendor.

Does it have to be this way? In DataCore’s blog post on the survey, the company urges users to stop thinking of storage in a traditional way:

In order to achieve the agile, cost-effective, and enduring IT infrastructures you seek, those old ties to physical storage devices must be broken, just like you’ve done with servers. To do so requires tackling the next “Big Problem” plaguing data centers today – dissolving the expensive and restrictive dependency on disk hardware.

Are storage cost forecasts keeping your company from virtualizing, or do you wish now that it had? Share your stories in the comments or send me an email directly at Melanie@ITKnowledgeExchange.com.

Melanie Yarbrough is the assistant community editor at ITKnowledgeExchange.com. Follow her on Twitter or send her an email at Melanie@ITKnowledgeExchange.com.