All of the described attributes result in the ability to more efficiently utilize storage and thereby reduce the overall cost of storage. All of this is accomplished in the Virsto software by the very nature of how it intelligently manages storage I/O. Johnson from Crutchfield confirms these additional benefits by indicating significant performance improvements and much more easily managed heterogeneous storage environments. Johnson tested in a real world environment, "SATA drives, SAS drives, Fibre Channel enterprise storage, and even a low-cost Dell solution as well." It's worth noting that Roger Johnson tested as many as 70 virtual machines during his testing exercises.
So, we finally got around to my key question of why Hyper-V before VMware? Mark's response was that "It's about being able to provide real value to the customer and to differentiate yourself in a field of potential competitors. Storage vendors such as EMC and NTAP, and start-ups like EvoStor and TinTri, have been focused on VMware. They are fine companies; however, we see the growing opportunity in the Microsoft Hyper-V space and we completely understand the dilemma faced by systems and storage admins with virtual machines and LUN management. By focusing on Hyper-V we have been able to understand the hypervisor at a very deep level, the file layout, and where and how to optimally improve storage I/O performance and eliminate that dreaded I/O blender effect."
With that said, I asked the natural follow-up question, will you support VMware and Citrix in the future? "Yes, we plan to support both in the future. We can do this because our software is truly hypervisor-agnostic. This part of our future road map."
To some, it may sound odd to virtualize the I/O in an already virtualized environment. However server virtualization brings with it a new set of challenges in computing and I/O management. Users should spend time with companies such as Virsto to gain a better understanding of how this new kind of I/O management for virtual machines can help them. Like Crutchfield's Roger Johnson, it's important to test these new offerings and demonstrate for yourself how they may be helpful for your environment.
I met with a number of other companies while at VMworld and I'll share my thoughts on some them such as Mellanox, Compellent, Dell, and Brocade in blogs this week and next.
