Software Defined Storage Virtualization or Software Defined Storage (SDS) is an architecture for computer storage offering abstractions for multi-tenant cloud. It is recommended for the readers, who are relatively newer to Virtualization, to read the basic article on Storage Virtualization, to understand how the the technology is changing through the article We Are Reaching an Age Where Computing is Defined by Software and one real application of the theory – Software Defined Datacenter and VMware vFabric. For practical understanding this Software Defined Storage Virtualization, one need a basic idea about bottom-up abstraction, top-down abstraction, multi-tenant cloud environment and Service Level Agreement.
Software Defined Storage Virtualization : The Basics
Software Defined Storage Virtualization, as we said in the above paragraph, is not really an isolated technology; it is co-existing practical application with existing technologies of virtualization including the concept of virtual machines, virtual disks. It is technically an practical example of coarse-grained bottom-up abstraction. This level of abstraction from the physical layer, has the advantage of ease of use, simplified overview of the often complicated infrastructure, providing the IT professionals more control and easier management of their environment through the software.
Basic thing is – I as a research worker or a service provider need to employ a group of trained works. Whatever the post we assign them, they need to work as we wish. This is the basic of the work-flow of business and economics. For example, I have a complex an unique plan. What we do, we split it in several pieces, add wrong pieces to randomize it and distribute it among the groups. It is done to prevent the theft of the master plan. In existent physical system, it was difficult for us to control it, as everything was physical, we needed another group of employees to check them. Software Defined Storage Virtualization actually abolishes it, apart from the advantages of cost saving, space saving, proper utilization of the existing resources etc.
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Software Defined Storage Virtualization : Current Situation
As VMware and Intel did the acquisitions of several companies and has introduced new products, the concept of software defined data center, Software Defined Storage etc. are becoming more and more clear and accessible to a wider audience.
Flash memory is becoming cheaper over time for deployment in the data center and the first implementations of this new medium have been adapted to work in existing infrastructures as an approach architecturally superior in terms of offering low-latency performance. The innovation in this field could lead to conceive soon as obsolete and unnecessarily expensive disk array mechanic. As for the rest of the infrastructure in fact, also the supply of data is becoming defined by software. This is because the mechanical infrastructure can not follow elastically data request of multi-core processors today. The SAS and SARA have been developed to extract every last bit of performance out of the mechanical HDD. These interfaces, however add latency and several bottlenecks when used in combination with the devices based on flash memory. The degradation in performance decreases the possibility for a solution of flash memory to provide the data to the application in the time required for execution.
Today, further improvements in the distribution of flash memory have eliminated this barrier. Software solutions that are currently available to the users and the softwares currently available to run on that hardware to give the characteristics of a commodity server storage device on the network, compatible with all network protocol standard. The storage market is a big market and seems to follow the trend of Software Defined Storage.
