Hold The Hardware?

The virtual storage market is a work in progress. As a segment of IT, virtual storage has to compete with ever-declining pricing of real iron and physical storage appliances, it has to compete with the emerging and intriguing cloud computing segment, and it has to compete with ever-more-limited IT resources for deployment and management. But it brings to the table important benefits: reduced infrastructure costs, ease of deployment and backup, and, not unimportant, a reduction in physical assets that an enterprise will need to have managed. Virtual storage applications provide many of the good elements of cloud computing -- namely no narrow racks to scrape your hands on and no pulled muscles while locking a physical appliance into place. But, in addition, the virtual storage platform provides the ability to manage arrays and volumes of data -- as well as back them up and easily recover them when needed. It's cost-effective in many regards.

There are drawbacks, though. While VMware has developed into the most robust virtualization platform on the market, virtual storage vendors appear to be doing their best to ignore Citrix or Microsoft's Hyper-V technologies for optimization of their offerings. We'll come back to this point later, but it's going to have to factor into your decision about how much time, energy and financial resources to invest in this space with all the other dynamics at play in enterprise storage and data center transformation.

Also, while virtualization can solve any number of IT problems with speed and low cost, performance and infrastructure will need to be monitored constantly. Little-used, archival data on virtual storage won't present as much of a problem in this regard. But virtualizing a server to share storage and administration resources means sharing performance; shared performance means latency could be an issue. And there are many instances when latency has to be avoided.

For this month's issue of CRNtech, we took a look at several virtual storage appliances using a standard VMware server, or the free VMware Player as a host platform. The virtual appliances we examined ran the gamut from technology provided by tier-one vendors like Hewlett-Packard, with its LeftHand appliance, to a bare-bones, do-it-yourself Ubuntu JeOSbased one. There are strengths and limitations to each but they all installed on VMware and worked with, at the most, minor aggravation.

NEXT: OpenFiler

OpenFiler

Like the Ubuntu JeOS-based solution, this is based on open source software and support is provided by its community of developers, although enhanced support, including via telephone, is available for purchase. The software itself is simple, lightweight and installed in a short while on a VMware Player virtual machine hosted by a Windows 7 PC. Not every appliance we examined was user-friendly enough to provide browser-based administration, but OpenFiler does -- and it's much appreciated.

The appliance itself is Linux-based, and line-command management on the VMware server itself is managed in that realm. On the Web-based GUI, administration over shares, access, file systems, iSCSI host configuration and more is provided. From installation to assignment of users, OpenFiler can take as little as an hour. Status messages, either through the terminal or Web GUI, are quick and clear; management works.

OpenFiler is worth a look, and worth a try if you're just dipping your toe into the water.

FalconStor Network Storage Server Virtual Appliance

The idea behind this virtual appliance from Melville, N.Y.-based FalconStor is simple: turn an internal or NAS storage device into a shared storage solution on a network, without the need for separate hardware.

We've liked a number of hardware appliances from FalconStor over the years, and the company has developed impressive deduplication software as well. It has staked out strong turf in the virtual storage appliance territory with the NSS VA, too, and after looking at it in the CRN Test Center lab, we can recommend it as one approach to deploying a network storage solution in any size enterprise or workgroup.

The appliance itself is built on top of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and, as designed, works between two VMware ESX servers; internal storage from one can be used and shared with another to create a network storage share. FalconStor gets a lot right with this deployment, including nice administration and powerful management features. An entry-level version of the virtual appliance is also free, although solution providers can package that in with other services in deploying an enterprise storage solution.

FalconStor pitches the NSS VA as a good solution for small businesses or remote-office/back-office (ROBO) deployments, and it is -- as long as those enterprises have standardized on VMware. For VARs who have clients that have, it's a must for a network storage solution line card.

NEXT: HP LeftHand p4000 Virtual SAN Appliance

HP LeftHand p4000 Virtual SAN Appliance

This installs in less than an hour on VMware and allows an enterprise to turn external SAS, iSCSI or Fibre Channel arrays into back-end storage. It supports Network RAID 5 and Network RAID 6, a factor that builds lots of flexibility into a small footprint.

Among the virtual appliances we looked at, Virtual SAN Appliance (VSA) plays the nicest with Microsoft environments, and HP has said it is working on an iteration of VSA that will be optimized for Microsoft Server 2008 and its Hyper-V virtualization platform. That means that should an enterprise seek to get started with this appliance on a VMware platform, it's worth keeping an eye on how the Hyper-V technology shapes up in the event anyone decides that a migration is in order.

Ubuntu JeOS

The JeOS version of Ubuntu (JeOS can be read as "just enough operating system") allows for quick creation of virtual appliances, and it's generally very easy to create an Ubuntu environment on a network that can serve as anything from a simple file server to slightly more complex data storage.

Ubuntu JeOS provides two benefits right away: Its footprint is less than 200 MB, meaning it's not going to create much overhead, and it supports the "sudo apt-get" command structure -- which is becoming more known and understood as Ubuntu becomes more widely used on both desktops and servers.

The downside is that it's managed in command lines ("just enough" doesn't include a graphical user interface), meaning that for those less fluent in Linux or the command structure, it could take much longer to install and manage than the other virtual storage appliances we've looked at. However, the fact that Linux, by its nature, is customizable means that developers and solution providers can deliver a storage solution with just enough manageability and just enough security if they architect the deployment well enough ahead of time.

VMware employs the "app store" model to support a virtual appliance ecosystem around its virtualization platforms and makes a number of storage, security and other appliances available for quick and easy download and installation from its VMware Virtual Appliance Marketplace. In fact, once a VMware ESX server is set up, and the VMware Infrastructure Client is installed on a client device, it's possible to download and install some virtual appliances without ever clicking on a browser.

But not every virtual appliance in the larger market works well in every VMware installation, and VMware drivers may not be available for every server that's in a data center. That's why it's tough for us to get too excited about virtual storage appliances at this stage of the game: Not every platform is supported equally by makers of virtual appliances. HP has made its intentions known that it will be developing a VSA to be optimized for Microsoft's Hyper-V, but others need to follow suit.

Yes, yes: It's hard to feel sorry for Microsoft receiving a lack of support from ISVs compared to makers of other platforms. The irony isn't lost here. However, the main focus should be on developing great solutions and great choices for the marketplace. In the virtual storage world, we're not there yet.

That said, we like the idea of creating high-functioning storage solutions that can be backed up as quickly and as easily as taking a snapshot of a virtual machine. And we like that these solutions are now leaning heavily toward those built upon Linux -- and customizable too. It's now possible for enterprises to deploy efficient, stable and reliable storage management and backup without further crowding a data center with hardware, without installing physical appliances that add to electricity and infrastructure costs and without the need to maintain and manage physical drives, fans, power supplies, physical security and more. And, unlike cloud solutions, virtual storage appliances put total control of the asset -- including latency and performance -- in the hands of those deploying and maintaining an enterprise.

We expect things to change in the coming year as Hyper-V and Citrix solutions become more robust and IT spending is focused on areas long overdue for refresh like the desktop and security. Those not ready for the cloud, and not ready to invest in more on-premise hardware, will take another look at storage virtualization. The solutions are there, with some trade-offs.

It's possible with virtualization to reach into the future to make data more manageable, secure and valuable. But while reaching forward, our recommendation is that you don't completely let go of hardware architecture until those trade-offs are minimized.

COMMUNITY: Get involved and voice your opinion on all things technical. E-mail Edward F. Moltzen at [email protected].