2005 - Servers, storage -- virtualise this

China Martens, IDG News Service

23/12/2005 07:11:54

If you only had a single word to describe what 2005 meant in the world of servers and storage, that word would be "virtualization." Announcements from IT vendors about what they were virtualizing or planned to virtualize were rife throughout the year.
Virtualization x86 server market leader VMware was active with new product releases and partnerships as well as opening up a portion of its software to third parties, all part of the company's grand plan to make its products ubiquitous. Meanwhile, XenSource became more of a serious competitor to VMware as it unwrapped both Xen 3.0, the latest version of its open-source virtualization software, as well as the beta version of what will be its first commercial product, XenOptimizer, a set of tools to simplify server virtualization.

While server virtualization is well entrenched largely thanks to the pioneering efforts of VMware, some vendors, including VMware's own parent EMC are moving more slowly into offering storage virtualization. So far, EMC's storage virtualization strategy has yet to fully gel. What is known is that it will involve Invista, its product for SAN (storage area network) virtualization, and the RainStorage network file virtualization technology EMC acquired through its purchase of Rainfinity.

EMC doesn't expect the storage virtualization market to really get going until late 2006 at the earliest, which differs from rival IBM's claims that many customers are already using its storage virtualization software TotalStorage SAN Volume Controller. IBM even appointed a vice president of virtualization in November to oversee the company's efforts in across-the-board virtualization. Expect more to come out of the storage virtualization partnership between IBM and Network Appliance next year.
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