A recent IDC study concludes that the average company deploying basic virtualization could see an ROI of 472 percent and payback in less than a year, including deployment time. Beyond reducing hardware and software costs, IDC notes that virtualization improves IT staff efficiency and end-user productivity, increases flexibility and manageability, reduces downtime and speeds the performance of business applications. Server virtualization does not occur in a vacuum, however. It can increase the burden on other aspects of the data center infrastructure, including storage.

Virtualization changes storage management in critical ways. It requires sufficient pools of distributed, networked storage to support the dynamic demands of virtual machines on top of rampant data growth. Virtualization also accelerates the pace at which capacity can be allocated to new applications, and enables the dynamic movement of applications and virtual disks. If not managed appropriately, virtualization can increase the difficulty of complying with configuration best practices, putting service levels at risk.

As information continues to grow exponentially, storage systems need to be intelligent enough to automatically optimize for both performance and cost savings. Customers virtualizing their data centers and beginning their journey to the private cloud require a storage infrastructure that is both simple and efficient. EMC has introduced new capabilities for its market-leading EMC CLARiiON and EMC Celerra midrange storage platforms to meet those requirements.

Simplifying Storage

Simplicity begins with ease of management. EMC’s new Unisphere software offers a fresh approach to managing storage. Integrated with VMware vCenter Server integration and VMware vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI), EMC Unisphere provides a simple, integrated experience for managing both EMC CLARiiON and EMC Celerra storage systems in physical and virtual environments. These technologies are proven to:

• perform “set it and forget it” tuning for application workloads in 80 percent less time;
• lower the number of “clicks” to manage common tasks by more than 90 percent;
• provision storage from a VMware vCenter Server in only two clicks;
• accelerate VMware server performance with 10 times less I/O for common tasks, 10 times more virtual machines per data store, and 10 times faster virtual machine deployment, clone, snapshot and VMware Storage vMotion migrations.

Through its new Unisphere management software, EMC enables administrators to perform common tasks quickly and easily. EMC unified storage is faster, too. New Block Data Compression reduces storage capacity requirements by up to 50 percent, and new FAST Cache performance optimization technology enables applications to run twice as fast. And it is fully automated — no administrator intervention required.

Fibre Chanel over Ethernet (FCoE) is also built into these unified storage systems for a complete Ethernet storage solution. Native FCoE support helps customers minimize infrastructure costs associated with multiple Fibre Channel HBAs and NICs, consolidates cabling, and dramatically improves savings associated with power and cooling expenses.

Increasing Storage Efficiency

Virtualization and application consolidation put extreme strain on storage arrays. The adoption of solid state disks (SSDs) — coupled with SATA drives — is the best practice for satisfying these heightened demands. EMC pioneered the integration of SSD technology across its storage portfolio, and is building unique capabilities like the EMC Fully Automated Storage Tiering (FAST) Suite, FAST Cache and Block Data Compression that automatically optimize the use of high-capacity SATA drives and high-performance SSDs to deliver better performance at the lowest cost.

With the availability of new 100GB and 200GB SSDs delivering up to 30 percent savings, EMC is making SSDs more affordable than ever before. EMC’s architecture can take full advantage of the savings, helping customers to:

• increase performance two-fold in Oracle and SQL Server environments;
• improve response time for VMware View by more than 80 percent;
• achieve up to 50 percent improvement in storage consumption for less-active data;
• improve total cost of ownership by up to 30 percent.

“As more and more organizations move toward a virtual data center, storage requirements are growing. According to ESG research more than half (54 percent) of current server virtualization users estimate their organization has experienced a net increase in total storage volume since their organization implemented a server virtualization solution,” said Brian Garrett, VP ESG Lab, Enterprise Strategy Group.

“EMC has a new set of powerful management interfaces that allows everyday storage functions to be offloaded, while providing the ability to proactively identify the unique and demanding needs of the virtual data center. ESG Lab testing of Unisphere and vCenter plug-ins has confirmed that EMC's intuitive management interfaces can be used to centralize — and simplify — the management of storage in a virtual data center. The company is putting all of the tools in place to make the private cloud a reality for customers today.”