The Influence on VMware

Application-aware storage systems, like the Pillar Axiom^TM, provide very high overall utilization rates that match VMware's high server utilization, supporting overall datacenter power efficiency and space optimization goals. An application-aware system is tuned both automatically and by the administrator for the applications that utilize the array on a file system and LUN level. It can reduce virtual server and storage deployment times, simplify overall server and storage management, and lower training costs while providing as much as three times the disk utilization rates of legacy storage systems.

Application-aware systems are designed to integrate closely with VMware to provision, manage and protect the storage resources needed by the VMs and the applications within them. They work together to provide differentiated performance, utilization, and availability service levels based on different application priorities. The general rule with networked storage is that VMs are given LUNs of homogenous storage, for a "one size fits all" approach. However, this is wasteful as not all applications need the same storage quality of service. Some require fast response storage for applications responding to Web requests. Others require high-capacity storage for archived data, and a third type could require a balance of capacity and speed.

Application-aware systems can provision storage to VMs using pre-defined application templates or profiles that define access priority to deliver the right storage QoS for each application. Their QoS features and LUN mapping enable administrators to set predictable service levels within VMware server and storage environments.

The application-aware system virtualizes storage so that an application in a VM is assigned a LUN of the size it will need over its life, only physically allocating a fraction of this storage at a time. As this physically allocated storage is used up, more is supplied automatically, ensuring that the amount of empty but allocated space on the disk drives is kept to a minimum. In this way, application-aware systems can reduce the amount of money tied up in storage and defer disk capacity purchases until they are actually needed.

Thin provisioning also obviates the need to use VMware's spanned virtual machine file system (VMFS) which adds complexity to the VMware environment. Using a thinly provisioned LUN will decrease the management overhead from the server-side, as well as allow the system's array to deliver a consistent performance profile and decreased complexity.

With multiple applications running on a single VMware server, the loss of the physical server's internal boot drive could cause multiple applications to go offline. This can cause downtime, which is especially critical in today's 24x7 business environment. The VMware servers can boot from the application-aware system's array, allowing the operating system and the application data to take advantage of the enterprise-level protection.