Storage virtualisation virtually here

There is room for various storage standards and architecture types as European users move steadily toward the industry's Holy Grail - virtualisation.

That is the overriding finding of research commissioned by the Storage Networking Industry Association's European arm (SNIA-E), the industry body that has worked to define virtualisation, best summarised as the pooling data from disparate devices so it can be managed from a single, centrally managed console.

The poll of 100 storage users found none will be consolidating their architecture simply around storage area network (SAN), networked attached storage (NAS) or older-style direct-attached storage (DAS) topologies. Most favour a hybrid approach.

It is a debate that is becoming increasingly important for vendors, users and those inbetween both groups as storage takes an ever-higher chunk of IT spending.

Twenty-nine per cent are considering virtualisation within the next six months, with 42 per cent planning on consolidating around SAN and NAS combined. Thirty per cent are looking to consolidate mainly around SAN and 11 per cent mainly around NAS.

SAN provides a dedicated high-speed storage network, commonly used for back-up within organisations, and is based on a standard called Fibre Channel. NAS is all about a standalone storage device typically attached to an Ethernet-based LAN with its own IP address.

Analyst house Meta Group last year reported SANs are now widely adopted. Half of the respondents to the latest SNIA-E poll said they use them, with 20 per cent using them alone.

Interestingly, users are looking at adopting iSCSI for SANs. iSCSI allows SANs to use IP networks instead of Fibre Channel, and will be present in 25 per cent of the polled organisations in a year's time as opposed to just four per cent now.