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Cos tend to overlook storage while virtualizing

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CIOL Bureau
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FORT LAUDERDALE, USA: A majority of medium-and large-enterprise IT organizations mistakenly overlook storage when implementing a virtualized operating environment, finds a survey, 'The State of Virtualization', by DataCore Software, a storage virtualization software provider.

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The survey also finds that nearly half of the respondents (43 per cent) had not anticipated the impact that storage would have on their server and desktop virtualization costs or had not started a virtualization project because the storage-related costs “seem too high.” As a result, the roll-out of their virtualization projects is delayed.

Also Read: Virtualisation cloud bog DR mechanism: Symantec

Additional findings from the DataCore survey comprising over 450 IT organizations across North America and Europe indicate:

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Of those that have deployed server virtualization, 66 per cent cited a substantial increase in storage costs as the biggest problem they are facing. Nearly 40 per cent say the storage infrastructure is either slowing application performance or limiting its availability, while more than 20 per cent indicate that business continuity has become more difficult.

Over 56 per cent now realize that consolidation creates I/O bottlenecks that prevent them from moving to the next level of virtualization.

Nearly one in four (22 per cent) IT administrators admitted that they feel “locked-in” to their storage hardware provider. One third of these respondents underestimated the costs that server/desktop virtualization would have on their storage budget.

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Accordingly, 41 per cent of the overall respondents are saddled with two or more different storage systems from the same vendor and more than 60 per cent cannot manage their storage resources as a single pool.

Despite the hype surrounding cloud initiatives, an overwhelming majority (73 per cent) of organizations have yet to take advantage of cloud services for storage needs. However, 70 per cent said access to more disk space would be the most important characteristic they would want from cloud-related storage — even more so than the disaster recovery functionality it could provide.

About 95 per cent of respondents cited they are likely to deploy server/desktop virtualization software from VMware, Microsoft, or Citrix in the coming year. While Microsoft Hyper-V adoption is growing, according to respondents, VMware is still top of mind. Nearly 65 per cent plan to deploy VMware, while only 10 per cent have identified Hyper-V as their platform of choice.

Almost half (48 per cent) of those surveyed are now taking advantage of storage virtualization software to tackle the storage-related obstacles associated with their server and desktop virtualization initiatives. Nearly three in four (74 per cent) rely on it to improve disaster recovery and business continuity practices.

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