I am often questioned during my Storage for Virtual Environments seminar presentations about VMware's Pluggable Storage Architecture (PSA). This system is fairly straightforward and concept: VMware provides native multipathing support for a variety of storage arrays, and allows third parties to substitute their own plug-ins at various points in the stack. But the profusion of … [Read more...] about VMware PSP and SATP in Plain English
multipathing
Multipath: Active/Passive, Dual Active, and Active/Active
Although it's rare in the PC world, multipath I/O is not new in enterprise IT. I've been juggling paths to storage and networks as long as I've been a systems administrator, and that's a bit longer than I care to admit. But the proliferation of technologies has made it difficult to understand path management. What's the difference between "dual active" and "active/active"? Is … [Read more...] about Multipath: Active/Passive, Dual Active, and Active/Active
Back From The Pile: Interesting Links From Mid-May
My travels last week kept me from posting my weekly round-up of interesting web content. So this week's is a little heavy (and heavily edited!) Most important: Please register to be a marrow donor, especially if you might be a match for Nick Glasgow of EMC! … [Read more...] about Back From The Pile: Interesting Links From Mid-May
What is VMware VDC-OS vStorage?
VMware packed a lot into their 2008 VMworld conference, including an outline of their "three pillars" strategy, focused on vClient, vCloud, and something they are calling the Virtual Datacenter Operating System. While it is debatable if this last item really is an operating system, it's certainly a major strategic change in messaging. VDC-OS is divided into four … [Read more...] about What is VMware VDC-OS vStorage?