As businesses face long-term budgetary pressure and unprecedented data growth, they must look for ways to control costs by making their operations more efficient. Key to achieving efficiency is the utilization of every storage resource to its fullest extent while ensuring that applications always have access to the hardware resources they require. Since the cost of managing storage is up to five times the costs of procuring it, to truly make storage efficient, companies need the right architecture and management of their storage infrastructure.
IT managers face significant challenges meeting business requirements since the environments they manage comprise multiple operating systems, storage from multiple vendors, and dissimilar applications. Due to this complexity, storage is often managed as islands, accommodating growth by adding new storage subsystems instead of making the most of what is already in place. This approach leads to storage utilization rates of only between 35% and 50%. To truly create an efficient environment, administrators must have the tools to skillfully manage large, complex and heterogeneous environments. This is where storage virtualization comes in. Storage virtualization helps businesses simplify the complex IT storage environment and gain control of capital and operating costs by providing consistent and automated management of Storage
