VMare has launched software designed to make it much easier for its customers to store large numbers of virtual machines created with the company’s software.
The software provides storage space for the virtual disks (VDs) that hold the data needed to run VMs. It is the first foray into storage virtualization after the company offered server virtualization with desktop and network virtualization underway as well.
The vSAN software is built directly into the kernel of VMare vSphere, the company’s virtualization OS. The features in it are however similar to the vSphere in which the software pools together internal storage either hard drives or solid state drives (SSDs), on x86 servers, which then can be used to store VDs. VMare has designed the software so it offers resiliency against server crashes, making it also capable of high throughput.
The new software across a 32 node cluster is capable of 2 million input/output operations per second (IOPS) on a read-only workload and 640,000 IOPS with a workload of mixed reads and writes.
“What VMware is hoping is that since you are using their software to virtualize your server, and potentially your network infrastructure as well, you can now also virtualize your storage as well using their software,” said Simon Robinson vice president of storage.
VMware vSAN costs US$2,495 per processor with a version for desktop at $50 per user.