LeftHand High On Hyper-V
The Test Center has worked with Hyper-V pretty extensively ever since the beta was released and has several Hyper-V machines up and running in the lab. It has its strengths, such as simplicity and the ability to create VPNs and manage multiple VLANs. Its tight integration with Windows Server 2008 is particularly attractive. However, virtualization is a crowded space. While Palo Alto, Calif.-based VMware currently takes the largest slice of the pie, it is not the only company Microsoft has to compete with. There's also Citrix Systems Inc., Sun Microsystems Inc. and Virtual Iron Software, to name a few.
A hypervisor is different from host-based virtualization. It is a thin abstraction layer booting on native hardware to perform resource allocation and partitioning. Host-based virtualization, on the other hand, uses the host operating system to run a subprocess, which provides a virtual CPU, memory and devices to a virtual machine. Hypervisor-based virtualization tends to be faster and more scalable.
For storage vendors, virtualization is a market shift they can't ignore. With data requirements increasing exponentially, businesses can't afford to skimp on storage systems. However, if the business is moving the physical servers to a virtual environment, it is even more critical that those storage boxes support that particular virtual solution. Sunnyvale, Calif.-based NetApp supports Hyper-V for data deduplication and thin provisioning on its storage appliances. Lefthand Networks, Boulder, Colo.--whose acquisition by Hewlett-Packard Co. was announced on Oct. 1 and is expected to be completed in early 2009--also recently unveiled Hyper-V support for its entire line of SANs.
Customers who've already plunged into virtualization with VMware or Xen have less incentive to use Hyper-V, even if they are a Microsoft shop, because there are still some things missing. Hypervisors are also heavily hardware-dependent, thus many customers would have to upgrade their hardware.
LeftHand Networks' line of iSCSI SANs can be seamlessly integrated into a Hyper-V environment. They are also much easier to set up and deploy vs. other types of storage technologies. For solution providers, this is an advantage because there is no storage-specific expertise required to manage these boxes.
LeftHand offers the SAN/iQ storage management software for its storage systems. The SAN itself is composed of multiple nodes clustered together to create a virtual storage array or pool. The iSCSI volumes are created from these pools. The software handles load balancing and replication for the storage nodes. These nodes can be added and reallocated without any replanning or reconfiguring, making management very straightforward. And for the Hyper-V environment, changes to the nodes are transparent.
Hyper-V allows on-the-fly changes to be made to the virtual server. Because it is so easy to create virtual machines, the virtual server environment can grow pretty quickly. These changes don't impact storage. The SAN management tools can allocate storage to the new machines as they are created. And despite changing the size or configuration of a virtual server, the allocated storage pool remains accessible. Scalability is not a problem.
LeftHand has optimized the system with roles. These roles handle reading and writing data differently, and can make it more efficient to write large chunks of data than with default roles. SAN/iQ also looks at automation and other management features to address resource management.
By making it easy to configure, and having changes made transparently, LeftHand is doing what all storage vendors need to keep in mind: Regardless of what the virtualization product of the month is, it has to be as straightforward as it would be with a physical server, or solution providers won't touch it.