* Virtualization: Third step to utility

By Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Network World, 08/09/05

There are four major steps on the road to a flexible data center: consolidation, standardization, virtualization and utility (see "Four steps to utility," . A company may choose one area, say storage, to start on the utility roadmap. Some companies may attempt to push all aspects of the data center towards utility. While the effort is not without challenges, it can bring benefits, especially in the form of reduced operational costs and greater agility. In this article, we will examine the challenges and implications of embarking on the third step: virtualization.

Storage virtualization has been a hot topic for at least the last two years. It occurs at two levels: block storage and file storage. Storage teams can implement virtualization of storage-area network storage to present several different physical storage racks as a single virtual storage pool.