Storage Effect

Server virtualization is helping storage shrug off a weak economy

Byte and Switch observe that disk storage demand continues to expand, even as a recession threatens in the US economy.  They see server virtualization and specifically the SCSI storage systems supporting it as the reason.

No surprise to me.  Storage demand is limited primarily by the ability to manage it effectively.  Virtualization makes server deployment easy, and iSCSI arrays make it easy to feeding their appetite for terabytes.  Case in point: Dell’s Equallogic. 

VMWare has helped open the door wide for real-world server virtualization, with Microsoft eager to walk in with Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V.

A future big spark for business storage demand will be the “top-down” mainstream technology shift driven by XIV at IBM and Hulk/Maui at EMC.