Tips: How to Balance Virtualization Technology and Enough Storage

Most enterprise users that adopt virtualization strategies do not plan for adequate storage for them, at least initially. But there are still many technologies that can help organizations maximize their existing storage space, such as storage virtualization, thin provisioning, and deduplication.

These technologies all solve the storage space supply problem. In fact, these methods use existing storage space as much as possible, for example, to increase the actual application rate and use efficiency, and to reduce the unused space. However, there are still other requirements issues: The first is the storage space required for a virtualization strategy. If this space can be reduced, there will be substantial savings in the cost of storage space that needs to be provided.

Although there are many possible ways to achieve this goal, it is regrettable that we still have to wait for some time.

ButlerGroup senior analyst RoyIllsley said: "Although we rarely use smart software to cut storage requirements, but this has been put on the agenda. Another problem that needs to be pointed out is that there are no relevant standards. So we will see that there are VMware specifications, Microsoft specifications, etc., but the scope of these specifications is limited. If you want to migrate a virtual machine from one platform to another, you must solve this problem. Disk utilization is reduced because you don't need to save files and pointers in different formats to complete the process."

Llsley believes that the entire virtual machine platform will become more and more efficient in terms of storage space in the future. He said: "At present, most standard operating systems are almost mature in terms of I/O, disk, and memory - these systems can effectively solve these problems. But virtualization technology has only appeared in recent years, and in these respects it is not yet. So perfect. When interoperability and standardization emerge, Intel and AM will provide more support for virtualization applications, so that software will become more and more streamlined."

LinkedClone

It's quite right to say this, but now what should corporate organizations do to reduce storage requirements?

Illsley hinted that the answer may be in software intelligence -- using temporary files and logging change events to reduce the need to save virtual machine data -- in fact these techniques are somewhat similar to deduplication and differential backup.

A simple example is VMware's LinkedClone, which is created in the clone virtual machine (parent machine). These linked clones share virtual disks with the parent clones, but these clones are independent and can change the contents of the virtual disk. Any change event made by a linked clone will not be reflected in the parent machine, and vice versa.

Once a linked clone is created, it exists as a series of changes to the original parent machine's original snapshot, which saves storage space. In the correct use case, a large number of linked clones may work independently at the same time, but only need a little storage space. However, one of the major drawbacks of linked clones is that as long as the linked clone is still connected to the parent machine, it must always be running. If the parent and linked clones are deleted, they cannot be accessed.

Another example of a virtual temporary file is virtual environment temporary file technology used by Villuozzo's virtualization platform. This actually refers to a Virtuozzo server, which has a temporary file area that holds temporary files for the operating system and applications.

A stand-alone virtual environment includes an operating system and one or more applications, but these are actually temporary files connected to an operating system or application file stored in a temporary file area. Any application of patches or upgrades also only needs to be saved as primary temporary files once and reflected in all virtual environments in a server.

The DataSynapse technology decomposes the virtual machine to reuse the temporary file and creates a storage block for the three components of the application stack. In the running process, virtual machines can be combined with temporary file components. DataSynapse claims that this can reduce the storage space of storage virtual machines by more than 80%.

Although the virtualization market is still in its infancy, some of the technologies mentioned above will become an important factor in the future development of virtualization technology. But just as virtualization technology itself allows different virtual servers to share one physical host, it is clear that in the future many different virtual servers will share the same host data in various ways. This will be the key to reducing the storage requirements of virtualization technology to a reasonable level.