A virtual storage area network (VSAN) is a logical partition in a physical storage area network (SAN). VSANs enable traffic to be isolated within specific portions of a storage area network, so if a problem occurs in one logical partition, it can be handled with a minimum of disruption to the rest of the network.
The
use of multiple, isolated VSANs can also make a storage system easier to
configure and scale out. Subscribers can be added or relocated without needing
to change the physical layout.
How VSAN works
A virtual SAN appliance enables
unused storage capacity on virtual servers to be pooled and accessed by virtual
servers as needed. A virtual SAN appliance is most often downloaded as a
software program that runs on a virtual machine, but some storage hardware
vendors are beginning to incorporate virtual SAN appliances into their
firmware. Depending on the vendor, a virtual SAN appliance might also be called
a software-defined storage (SDS) appliance or, simply, a virtual storage
appliance.
VSAN vendors and features
The acronym for virtual SAN is spelled
differently by different vendors. When spelled with all capital letters, the
acronym is usually associated with Cisco Systems and is talked about in
conjunction with zoning, which splits a physical SAN into multiple, isolated
subnetworks. When spelled with a lower-case v, the acronym is usually associated
with VMware and Hyper-V features that allow available hard disk drive
storage to be pooled from across clustered hosts.
Benefits of virtual
storage area networks
- Nondisruptive data
migration. A
VSAN enables adopters to migrate data between drives easily and without any
downtime.
- Better information
lifecycle management. Virtualization administrators can relocate frequently
accessed data to high-performance storage, pushing rarely accessed data regions
onto less expensive storage resources.
- Improved manageability. Although it's
relatively easy to manage identical drives, the task can become much more
difficult if storage resources involve several vendors or even several models
from the same vendor. A VSAN isn't only easy to set up, but straightforward to
manage and provision.
- Overall simplicity. Compared to the
available alternatives, a VSAN is easy to provision and manage. This is because
the VSAN is embedded directly within the hypervisor, enabling installation
and configuration to be handled rapidly and
- Reduced total cost of
ownership. A
VSAN can be deployed on inexpensive x86 servers, eliminating the need for large
upfront investments.
Virtual storage area
network use cases
- Server virtualization
- Cloud automation
- Demilitarized zones and any test environments
- Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) environments
- Support edge network sites
- Convert localized storage into virtual storage
Comments
Post a Comment