Virtualizing Storage

Summary

This chapter has taken you on a journey through the world of storage virtualization. We went from RAID to in-band virtualization in a SAN, jumped over to HSM, and wrapped up with tape libraries. As you’ve seen, plenty of possibilities exist. Before jumping into untested water, keep in mind that many of the solutions we discussed were provided by third-party vendors. Therefore, always look to ensure that any third-party product is already compatible with the hardware and software in your specific environment before virtualizing.

So far, we’ve conquered plenty of virtualization technologies on a one-by-one basis. In the next chapter, we’ll tie them all together and provide examples of how to integrate the vast array of virtualization products in any network environment.