The buzz around File Virtualization in the storage industry is at an all time high right now. What’s funny to me about this is that it’s not such a new thing. Maybe it’s that the IT staffers out there are just now becoming sophisticated enough to handle this kind of virtualization technique… hmmm… but they’ve always been tech savvy, so that’s not it. Let’s be honest, the reason File Virtualization is hot is because every computing environment is running into the unavoidable realities of exploding data growth in all directions - spreading like a virus across the network and in the data center.

Let’s first define File Virtualization before going any further. File Virtualization is the technique that allows client PC’s to access and visualize data hierarchies on NAS devices and other file servers in a single consolidated fashion even though the data may be spread out across 10’s if not 100’s of storage devices. This technique simplifies login scripts and avoids complex auto-mount schemes and allows the physical storage infrastructure to grow independently without forcing the end users to know that “your data is now here instead of there”. That’s fine and dandy since we all know that end users couldn’t care less where the data is located - they just want reliable access to it without having to hunt around for it.

This brings up what I believe to be the most important point about data explosion and managing the sprawl. If it’s inevitable that more data will be created, and that new storage devices will be added to handle the additional data growth… is it more important to simplify the data hierarchy or is it more important to allow end users to easily sift through the mounds of data that is generated to find what they are looking for? It depends on your perspective.

If you’re an IT staffer, simplifying the data hierarchy, simplifies your life because now you just create a single logical map to multiple devices. All the complexities are hidden from the end users - thus preventing help desk calls on what drive letter or mount point is for what. This is great - for IT.

If you’re an end user, you just want to find what you’re looking for. It may be data you created; it may be data someone else created; it could be data in a database; it might even be sitting in email. The point is, you’re not likely to care where the data is, as I pointed out earlier, you just want to be able to find it quickly. In comes data indexing services. I’ve talked about indexing in previous blogs (Desktop search… do I care? and Indexing is the missing link to ILM). With enterprise class data indexing products - the simplified data hierarchy that File Virtualization offers doesn’t matter. Just type in some word or phrase that describes what you’re looking for and the entire enterprise data infrastructure can be searched - NAS, file servers, databases, email… everything. These products support all the native security protocols, so just because you’ve found what you’re looking for - that doesn’t mean you have access to it. And that’s the way it should be.

For me, I think File Virtualization is great - but only solves half the problem. The need to simplify the way data is organized is important, but no more important than the need to find the data. If IT staffers are looking to make their lives easier then I would say look at File Virtualization - if they are looking to make the end users lives easier - indexing is the answer.

There’s lots of information floating around out there from various vendors on File Virtualization, so if you’re thinking of deploying a File Virtualization strategy, do your homework. Most are hardware based solutions, but other solutions (like Microsoft’s DFS) are software add-ons to existing servers.

Just another thought on File Virtualization - I blogged recently about what could be done with all these super powerful storage appliances that are shipping now - File Virtualization is definitely a good candidate for an application that can utilize some of those spare cycles!

Blog ya later!

Joe

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 17th, 2007 and is filed under General, Storage Applications, Platforms, Storage Management, Advisor - Joe Disher. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.