Software-Defined Storage (SDS) and Storage Virtualization

www.vmware.com/files/pdf/products/vsphere/VMware-vSphere-Storage-Appliance-Datasheet.pdf Review: VMware Virtual SAN turns storage inside-out | InfoWorld Convergence of compute and storage is all the rage in the virtualization market these days. You see it in Microsoft's Windows Server 2012 R2 with Hyper-V and Storage Spaces. You see it in third-party platforms such as Nutanix. The goals behind Virtual SAN, or VSAN, are both to lower overall storage costs and to eliminate the I/O latencies associated with networked storage. [ Virtualization showdown: Microsoft Hyper-V 2012 vs. VSAN requires a minimum of three vSphere nodes to form a clustered data store. VSAN, at least in its initial release, targets a short list of use cases. For this review, I was provided with hardware from Supermicro and Lenovo. Note that the single HDD per node in the Lenovo cluster, while supported by VMware, is not recommended.