Cloud storage

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Virtual machines and SAN Switches

With advancement of virtual machines provided by software like VMWare, Xen, Microsoft Virtual PC and all, one can have many virtual servers running on the same base hardware. This has been possible with the new hardware being very powerful and the fact that the CPU power is not consumed to its maximum capacity. With this virtual machine scenario, there is a need for the SAN to be virtual machine aware. The SAN switches are now getting virtual machine aware. One such feature has recently being added by Cisco in its NX-OS switch. With this the SAN switches have the power to give proper authentication, security, QoS, at the virtual machine level rather than the individual hardware(host) level irrespective of where the virtual machine is running.

I am still learning on this front but I think even the HBAs is such case will have to be virtual machine aware to expose the proper PWWN to the switch. Any comments?

Interesting Reads:
NPIV
HBA

Introduction

This is new blog that I am starting today in a hope to help me and others understand the different trends in the storage domain. This blog will mainly contain links to news that are relevant to the storage domain and which I think are important for me. If there are any opinions mentioned in the blog those are strictly my opinions. I am sure this will help me analyze the domain in a better way.

Please feel free to comment on the postings and put in a link to your blog if you think it is related.

Thanks.