This document discusses how virtualization can enhance IT infrastructure and help organizations overcome challenges like data growth. It finds that more advanced virtualization deployments, with higher percentages of virtualized servers and critical workloads, achieve greater benefits than basic deployments. These benefits include improved efficiency, flexibility to respond to business needs quickly, and reduced hardware and staffing costs. However, storage solutions may still hinder some organizations from fully realizing the potential of virtualization. The document will examine how the right storage implementation can maximize virtualization benefits.

1.
White
Paper
Storage to Enhance Virtual
Infrastructures
By Mark Peters
October, 2011
This ESG White Paper was commissioned by IBM
and is distributed under license from ESG.
© 2011, Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved

2. White Paper: Storage to Enhance Virtual Infrastructures 2
Contents
The New Virtual Reality ................................................................................................................................ 3
Efficiency Rules ......................................................................................................................................................... 3
What IT Faces ........................................................................................................................................................... 4
The More You Virtualize, The More You Get ............................................................................................... 4
.
Storage: Hindrance or Helper? ..................................................................................................................... 6
What Storage Should Provide .................................................................................................................................. 6
.
IBM Storage Solutions for Virtual Infrastructure ..................................................................................................... 7
.
The Bigger Truth ........................................................................................................................................... 8
All trademark names are property of their respective companies. Information contained in this publication has been obtained by sources The
Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) considers to be reliable but is not warranted by ESG. This publication may contain opinions of ESG, which are
subject to change from time to time. This publication is copyrighted by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. Any reproduction or redistribution of
this publication, in whole or in part, whether in hard-copy format, electronically, or otherwise to persons not authorized to receive it, without the
express consent of the Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc., is in violation of U.S. copyright law and will be subject to an action for civil damages and, if
applicable, criminal prosecution. Should you have any questions, please contact ESG Client Relations at (508) 482-0188.
This document was developed with International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) funding. Although the document may utilize publicly
available material from various sources, including IBM, it does not necessarily reflect the positions of such sources on the issues addressed in this
document.
© 2011, Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

3. White Paper: Storage to Enhance Virtual Infrastructures 3
The New Virtual Reality
The virtual server revolution has changed IT permanently. The flexibility, mobility, and cost savings it brings are too
beneficial to deny. As a result, organizations have come to expect more from IT, including the ability to leverage
private, public, and hybrid cloud strategies. But in many cases, storage deployments can create a drag that keeps
the organization from fulfilling its virtualization potential.
Isn’t it time you expected more from your storage—and you got it? This paper will examine the realities IT is facing
and how the right storage implementation can make all the difference.
Efficiency Rules
Limited budgets and underutilized data center resources are leading many organizations to implement virtualization
technologies to improve efficiency. According to ESG’s 2011 IT Spending Intentions Survey, increasing server
virtualization was the number one priority for midmarket and enterprise organizations in North America and
Western Europe.1 Also of note is that this is a repeat performance from 2010. Of additional note was that second on
the list was managing data growth. That particular problem is becoming a constant—like death and taxes, data
growth seems to be one of the few certainties in life.
It is little wonder, then, that when asked what business initiatives these IT professionals expected to have the
greatest impact on spending decisions over the next 12 to 18 months, reduction in operational expenditures and
business process improvement initiatives topped the list—as they have done for three years running.2 Organizations
are desperately seeking efficiency.
Figure 1. Most Important Considerations for Justifying IT Investments, 2009 vs. 2010 vs. 2011
Which of the following considerations do you believe will be most important in
justifying IT investments to your organization’s business management team over the
next 12‐18 months? (Percent of respondents, three responses accepted)
62%
Reduction in operational expenditures 54%
43%
37%
Business process improvement 42%
39%
31% 2009
Return on investment / speed of payback 33%
37% (N=492)
2010
32% (N=515)
Improved security / risk management 36%
35% 2011
(N=611)
37%
Reduction in capital expenditures 30%
24%
20%
Improved regulatory compliance 23%
19%
Reduced time‐to‐market for our products or 17%
10%
services 16%
0% 20% 40% 60% 80%
Source: Enterprise Strategy Group, 2011.
1
Source: ESG Research Report, 2011 Spending Intentions Survey, January 2011.
2
Ibid.
© 2011, Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

4. White Paper: Storage to Enhance Virtual Infrastructures 4
Striving for greater efficiency is a sensible response to the massive data growth occurring. And it coincides with the
results that organizations have seen with server virtualization: dramatic reductions in capital and operational costs
that arise from consolidating workloads on fewer servers, leading to fewer maintenance tasks and software licenses.
Server virtualization offers a ray of hope for IT.
What IT Faces
Why is efficiency so important? It’s because of the very different and specific challenges organizations face today.
First, there is the massive data growth mentioned earlier: some organizations are doubling and tripling the amount
of data under management. This is driven by ubiquitous Internet and social media web sites, improvements in
bandwidth and throughput that make streaming video actually work, ever‐expanding databases, regulatory
requirements for data protection and retention … the list could go on. More and more people have a smart phone in
their pocket and a tablet computer slung over their shoulder; the ability to both create and consume content is
ever‐present.
A common solution to such problems is to buy more hardware, although due to an accompanying expectation of
performance that can result in underutilized assets that are extraordinarily difficult to manage. And, while data
continues to grow exponentially, many budgets have remained flat at best. Some purse strings are loosening, but
there remains a strong push to do more with less in every way possible. CIOs are pushing IT to use less hardware,
less energy, and even fewer people despite rampant growth in applications and data.
That’s where server virtualization has become so critical. It’s more efficient, saves money, reduces power needs,
dramatically reduces under‐utilization, and improves flexibility. Server virtualization can make organizations more
agile so that they can shift to accommodate business needs. For instance, if you decide to enter a new market, you
can get a new PowerVM or System x virtual machine (VM) up and running in minutes to help find target customers.
As with other server virtualization offerings, PowerVM can be used to enable and deliver a multitude of
consolidation and flexibility improvements3—in this case for AIX, IBM System i, and Linux environments on IBM
POWER processor based systems. With its range of abilities, it can seem like “instant IT”! The only downside is that
user expectations have jumped substantially: they don’t understand why some IT tasks take so long. Users want
more and more functionality but have less and less tolerance for delays. Clearly, these expectations are often a
mismatch.
The More You Virtualize, The More You Get
In order to gain a deeper understanding of the role of server virtualization for organizations today, ESG conducted
in‐depth research with large midmarket and enterprise organizations.4 While a number of interesting results were
discovered, key among them was the significant difference in virtualization benefits achieved based on the
sophistication of the virtualization deployment. There is no question that consolidation and cost benefits are
available to all levels of virtualization deployments. But those organizations that have driven virtualization deeper
into the heart of the business are achieving far greater benefits.
A brief explanation of how this information came to light is useful. ESG developed a Server Virtualization Maturity
Model that segmented the market into three categories. Organizations were categorized based on their profile
across four dimensions of overall virtualization sophistication:
1. Scope of deployment, measured by the overall percentage of virtualized servers.
2. Virtual production ratio, measured by the percent of VMs running in the production environment (as
opposed to test and development).
3
This is not a PowerVM‐focused paper, but some of the main ways that such server virtualization can be used are to: a) Consolidate
environments that are underutilized and have varied/dynamic requirements; b) Grow or shrink resources dynamically, to optimize the use of
energy, space, and resources; c) Deploy new workloads rapidly by provisioning VMs to meet changing business demands; d) Develop and test
applications in secure, independent domains while production runs on the same system; e) Transfer live workloads to support server
migrations, balance system loads, or to avoid planned downtime; and f) Control server sprawl to reduce system management costs.
4
See ESG Research Report, The Evolution of Server Virtualization, November 2010.
© 2011, Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

5. White Paper: Storage to Enhance Virtual Infrastructures 5
3. Infrastructure efficiency, measured by the virtual‐to‐physical server consolidation ratio.
4. Workload penetration, measured by the deployment of multiple virtual workloads, particularly in mission‐
critical applications.
With these metrics, three categories of virtualization implementation were established: basic (22% of respondents),
progressing (53%), and advanced (25%). As Figure 2 shows, for each virtualization benefit, a higher percentage of
advanced deployments report experiencing it when compared to basic and progressing group. As you’ll note, the
gaps are smaller for basic virtualization benefits such as reducing IT capital costs, reducing server floor space
requirements, and having a more effective test and development environment. However, when examining at higher
level benefits, the gap between advanced users and others is quite significant. For instance, 58% of advanced users
are improving disaster recovery, but only 27% of basic users are. More than half (53%) of advanced users are
improving application availability, but only 27% of basic users state that.
Figure 2. Benefits of Server Virtualization, by Virtualization Maturity
What benefits has your organization realized as a result of deploying server
virtualization technology? (Percent of respondents, multiple responses accepted)
63%
We have reduced IT capital costs 55%
49%
We have improved our disaster recovery 58%
38%
capabilities 27%
57%
We have reduced IT operational costs 55%
44%
We have reduced server power & cooling 57%
41%
requirements 38%
We have improved server resource optimization 57%
40%
and utilization 32%
56%
We have reduced the time to provision servers 39% Advanced
35%
(N=115)
We have reduced server floor space 56%
48%
requirements 51% Progressing
53% (N=245)
We have improved application availability 31%
27%
Basic (N=103)
We have improved the number of servers that 52%
34%
each administrator can manage 33%
51%
We have improved server backup processes 34%
26%
We have simplified ongoing management and 50%
34%
maintenance of servers 27%
We now have a more effective 46%
36%
test/development environment 39%
We have a more effective development QA 29%
23%
process 17%
We have improved application time to 27%
22%
market/value 15%
0% 20% 40% 60% 80%
Source: Enterprise Strategy Group, 2010.
Advanced deployments are farther along the path to a truly dynamic, utility‐like IT environment. The good news for
basic and progressing users is that they can gain invaluable insight from those that have come before them.
To put it simply, the more you virtualize, the more you get from virtualization.
© 2011, Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

6. White Paper: Storage to Enhance Virtual Infrastructures 6
Storage: Hindrance or Helper?
Sounds good, does it not? But things don’t look quite so rosy from the storage end of things. While new server
strategies have transformed operations, storage implementations often can—and do— hinder progress. It’s great to
get a new VM up in minutes, but if its storage takes weeks to provision, the new VM is of little use. Similarly, if you
have to shut down production in order to add storage capacity and re‐map LUNs to servers, then scaling servers
quickly doesn’t help. With many applications consolidated on each physical server, contention for communication
ports forces administrators to do a lot more planning and managing to get backups completed in time with minimal
disruption.
These problems are not wholly surprising. Many common storage architectures, implementations, and management
techniques originally came from the monolithic mainframe era. While huge improvements have been made, the
original underlying concepts upon which these storage architectures were designed are cracking under the weight of
progress. Scale‐up silos of proprietary disk were designed to be physically managed and mapped to individual
servers, but that is no longer how the processing side of IT works.
Many server virtualization users know this already. When asked what storage developments would enable wider
server virtualization usage, at least 25% of respondents mentioned each of the following aspects: faster storage
provisioning, more scalable storage infrastructure to support rapid VM growth, and increased storage virtualization
(see Figure 3).
Figure 3. Storage Developments That Would Enable Wider Server Virtualization Usage
From a storage infrastructure perspective, which of the following developments do
you believe need to take place in order to enable more widespread server
virtualization usage in your organization? (Percent of respondents, N=190, multiple
responses accep
Additional training for IT staff 33%
Faster storage provisioning 28%
More scalable storage infrastructure to support rapid
25%
virtual machine growth
Increased use of storage virtualization 25%
Better storage migration tools 25%
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35%
Source: Enterprise Strategy Group, 2010.
What Storage Should Provide
Storage can become a ball and chain as organizations try to extend server virtualization in their data centers. So
what does storage need to look like in order to provide the same kinds of efficiencies? What features should storage
devices have in order to work in partnership with virtual servers? How can storage help improve asset utilization,
make workloads more mobile, speed application provisioning, and simplify management? ESG believes the following
are key features:
Self‐optimization. Arrays need to automatically tune and reconfigure to optimize whatever workloads
appear, and adjust as workloads change
© 2011, Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

7. White Paper: Storage to Enhance Virtual Infrastructures 7
Self‐healing. Storage should be built to handle fault scenarios autonomously, rebuilding and remapping
array resources to keep applications running at peak performance
Dynamic scaling. This refers not just to scaling up, but also to scaling back again after a workload burst, and
the ability to extend virtually to whatever workloads are presented
Self management. Storage must be able to adapt to changing scenarios based on policies and enforce those
policies through automation
Connectivity. Organizations cannot be restricted by proprietary storage network protocols, and should be
able to take advantage of the rising speed (and dropping price) of Ethernet
Storage arrays should also provide functionality that takes the load off of server CPU. For example, arrays should
provide data protection with snapshots and remote replication, the ability to leverage storage tiers that optimize
performance at the lowest TCO possible, and integration with server virtualization tools will make it all work
together easily.
IBM Storage Solutions for Virtual Infrastructure
IBM has remained at the forefront of both server virtualization capabilities (notably with its PowerVM product) and
also with storage developments. Clearly both are important. The company offers the efficient, scalable, easy‐to‐
manage storage solutions that both mid‐range and enterprise‐class virtual server environments need. Of special
note are recent enhancements to IBM’s XIV Storage System and Storwize V7000 solutions; both were built to
analyze, adapt to, and improve application performance while remaining easy to use. This type of “storage
intelligence” is becoming a necessity for organizations that want to keep applications performing as expected in
dynamic virtual and cloud‐based infrastructures. With new VMs being created quickly and workloads constantly
moving, administrators would have to constantly tune to keep the storage environment up to snuff—but not if the
storage array can adapt on its own.
XIV
Enterprise‐class XIV storage is grid‐based, and automatically spreads data around to optimize application
performance and eliminate hot spots. Its grid architecture is purpose‐built for virtual and cloud infrastructures.
Consolidated virtual workloads, by definition, create increasingly random IO profiles because many different
applications are sending reads and writes. The grid structure was designed to use massive parallelism to optimize
random IO, so it’s faster by nature. In addition, performance can grow along with capacity, eliminating that trade‐
off. XIV’s self‐tuning ability enables high performance using low‐cost, high‐capacity drives to reduce TCO; this
strategy differs from trying to improve performance with a tier of high‐speed, low capacity disk that is constantly
under‐utilized and it is the kind of new idea customers have come to expect from IBM.
XIV is built for high reliability and availability with redundancy and proactive self‐healing. Built‐in management tools
are extremely simple to use, and arrays seamlessly scale in capacity, cache, processing power, and host connectivity.
XIV even has a free iPad app, XIV Mobile Dashboard, which can be used to monitor XIV systems from anywhere.
Other built‐in advanced features include space‐efficient snapshots, global mirroring for replication and disaster
recovery, consistency groups, thin provisioning, and automated data migration. In addition, it is deeply integrated
with VMware solutions and APIs, as IBM and VMware have a long‐standing partnership. Not only does integration
with Site Recovery Manager simplify site failover, but some VMware functions can be offloaded to the XIV array
through VAAI for processing efficiency. These are features that customers should expect from their storage vendors
because they help them to get more from the virtualized environment.
Storwize V7000
For the mid‐range, IBM Storwize V7000 tackles performance and efficiency in a virtual world with built‐in thin
provisioning, Easy Tier automated storage tiering, and storage virtualization. The new Storwize V7000 Unified can
support file and block storage with fully integrated management to handle the massive growth of unstructured data
without requiring a different storage silo. Both Storwize V7000 and Storwize V7000 Unified scale up and scale out
© 2011, Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

8. White Paper: Storage to Enhance Virtual Infrastructures 8
easily to accommodate the rapidly changing needs of virtual and cloud‐based environments, and includes
automatic, policy‐driven tiering to optimize performance and cost while simplifying administration.
Integration with VAAI lets the Storwize V7000 and Storwize V7000 Unified take some of the load from servers to
free up processing resources. Improved mirroring lets organizations balance network costs with recovery point
objectives. External storage virtualization enables non‐disruptive migration from legacy and non‐IBM arrays or
allows them to be retained and consolidated—another efficiency measure designed for investment protection.
Snapshots and replication are easy to manage for efficient protection. Storwize V7000 Unified also supports IBM’s
new Active Cloud Engine, delivering policy‐based file management for backup archiving, and migration. In our
efficiency‐focused world, organizations can reduce CAPEX and OPEX with consolidation, virtualization, and
automation. Storwize V7000 and Storwize V7000 Unified have been designed for exactly those needs.
The Bigger Truth
In dynamic IT environments, virtualization is becoming the norm. As a result, organizations have greater
expectations of the data services available to them: fast provisioning, high application performance, no downtime,
complete data protection, easy data restore, and business restart. As dramatic advancements have been made on
the processing side with server virtualization, the storage side has been more difficult to change. While the server
virtualization sails are wind‐filled and moving IT organizations toward open water, storage built on old‐fashioned
concepts remains an anchor dragging them back into the harbor. For existing and prospective users of advanced
IBM capabilities, be they processors such as POWER Systems or System x or server virtualization such as PowerVM,
there is likely to be additional available overall system value by also taking a good look at the storage architecture in
use.
In simple terms, it’s time for such customers to have the same expectations of storage as they have of server
resources. The combined benefits of virtual of servers and storage can help move you closer to a true infrastructure
utility via scalable, easily managed pools of computing resources connected to equally scalable and easily managed
pools of full‐featured storage with high performance and availability built in.
Where should you look to create this dynamic IT infrastructure? As with many things in life and business, ESG
recommends first investigating and leveraging the relationships you already trust. If you have already chosen IBM
for the server needs of your [virtualized] data center, take a look at its storage solutions as well. XIV and Storwize
V7000 are the kind of scalable, efficient storage solutions that can match the capabilities of virtual servers.
Customers expect a company as well‐respected as IBM to be looking out for their needs and, as usual, IBM doesn’t
disappoint here.
© 2011, Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

9.
20 Asylum Street | Milford, MA 01757 | Tel:508.482.0188 Fax: 508.482.0218 | www.enterprisestrategygroup.com