Visualizing real storage virtualization

Steve Taylor, one of our SEs, created an animation that shows the multiple layers of virtualization that create the natively wide-striped data layout on a 3PAR storage server.  I think it’s the coolest thing I’d seen since joining the company that quickly summarizes the multiple layers of virtualization in a 3PAR array. 

All the functions shown are automatically done for the customer with minimal administrative effort. 3PAR customers do not spend time planning the layout of special disk pools or preparing their disk drives configurations for certain functions.  All they do is select the drive class and the RAID level for the volume they are creating and the rest of the data layout work is done for them.

The demo shows how a RAID 5 3+1 virtual volume is created, what it does not show is the way other volumes would be created using different RAID levels over the same set of resources. It would be a replay of this, but with a different RAID level applied – everything else would be the same.  

Not only does this design provide massive throughput, it also responds very quickly when customers need to add volumes. It’s like driving a freight train that can corner. Try doing that with your v-Max on anything but a test track.  

Steve Taylor, one of our SEs, created an animation that shows the multiple layers of virtualization that create the natively wide-striped data layout on a 3PAR storage server.  I think it’s the coolest thing I’d seen since joining the company that quickly summarizes the multiple layers of virtualization in a 3PAR array. 

All the functions shown are automatically done for the customer with minimal administrative effort. 3PAR customers do not spend time planning the layout of special disk pools or preparing their disk drives configurations for certain functions.  All they do is select the drive class and the RAID level for the volume they are creating and the rest of the data layout work is done for them.

The demo shows how a RAID 5 3+1 virtual volume is created, what it does not show is the way other volumes would be created using different RAID levels over the same set of resources. It would be a replay of this, but with a different RAID level applied – everything else would be the same.  

Not only does this design provide massive throughput, it also responds very quickly when customers need to add volumes. It’s like driving a freight train that can corner. Try doing that with your v-Max on anything but a test track.