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Storage virtualisation is love

But what the hell is it?

Storage Expo Storage Virtualisation was getting the hard sell at the Storage Expo, housed in Birminghams' NEC, yesterday. It must have been a tough sell as well because research launched at the show suggested companies weren't aware of it.

A storage survey run by a storage reseller Q Associates revealed that the storage virtualisation was way below the radar screens of most businesses. This was in direct contrast to stands in the exhibition, though. A variety of companies had pegged up proud "we do storage virtualisation" and "storage virtualisation is love" signs (or just about anyway).

Veritas was shouting the loudest, with an hourly presentation on its virtualisation abilities. However, some resellers queried about this were a little sceptical about how ready an actual product was. The company's strategy seems to touch on a number of its existing wares. DataCore's SANsymphony, FalconStor's IPStor and Computer Associates' BrightStor product are some of the others being pitched into this arena. A number of resellers could be seen shaking the same tree, but from a more vendor-agnostic viewpoint.

So just what the hell is storage virtualisation?
Depending on whom you speak to (and expect lots of techno waffle when you do), it seems to boil down to being a box that an IT manager can slap in the middle of the data flow that controls all the storage 'stuff' that a company may have, providing advanced data and capacity management, as well as maximising the potential of the existing hardware infrastructure (think increased ROI, etc.). ®

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