Virtual data storage is becoming an increasingly popular option for companies looking to reduce IT costs. In reality, since these solutions don’t require redundancies in the hardware typically found in traditional enterprise storage systems for disaster recovery, they are able to reduce upfront costs and ongoing operating costs by substantial amounts.

Virtual data storage allows IT departments to pool physical storage devices, such as SANs which appear to be an individual device or storage array. There are a variety of methods to implement this technology, including network-based storage virtualization (which combines all of the storage devices of an FC or iSCSI the SAN into one pool that is managed via a central management console) and host-based virtualization. Host-based Virtualization is typically used in HCI Systems and Cloud Storage.

To function with virtual storage, it has to be compatible with underlying hardware infrastructure such as networking components and servers, as well as with the most common management tools and hypervisors. It should also be able to support data encryption as well as granular access and authentication controls, as well as robust backup and disaster recovery capabilities.

Virtual storage should also be able to address concerns regarding latency and performance. This means that critical applications can run without compromising performance or adding latency to retrieval of data. This involves evaluating the storage controller’s capabilities, network bandwidth and capacity for disk I/O as much as implementing box data room caching mechanisms. It also requires implementing advanced storage features such as tiering, replication and virtualization at the virtualization layer.