Enterprises Failed To Anticipate Storage Impact On Virtualisation Project Costs

A survey “The State of Virtualization” by DataCore Software, the provider of storage virtualisation software, finds that a majority of medium- and large-enterprise IT organisations mistakenly overlook storage when implementing a virtualised operating environment. The data reveals that nearly half of the respondents (43 percent) had not anticipated the impact that storage would have on their server and desktop virtualisation costs or had not started a virtualisation project because the storage-related costs “seem too high”. As a result, the rollout of their virtualisation projects is delayed.

Additional findings from the DataCore survey comprising over 450 IT organisations across North America and Europe indicate:

Of those that have deployed server virtualisation, 66 percent cited a substantial increase in storage costs as the biggest problem they are facing. Nearly 40 percent say the storage infrastructure is either slowing application performance or limiting its availability, while more than 20 percent indicate that business continuity has become more difficult.

Over 56% now realise that consolidation creates I/O bottlenecks that prevent them from moving to the next level of virtualisation.

Nearly one in four (22 percent) IT administrators admitted that they feel “locked-in” to their storage hardware provider. One third of these respondents underestimated the costs that server/desktop virtualisation would have on their storage budget. Accordingly, 41 percent of the overall respondents are saddled with two or more different storage systems from the same vendor and more than 60% cannot manage their storage resources as a single pool.

Despite the hype surrounding cloud initiatives, an overwhelming majority (73 percent) of organisations have yet to take advantage of cloud services for storage needs. However, 70 percent said access to more disk space would be the most important characteristic they would want from cloud-related storage – even more so than the disaster recovery functionality it could provide.

95 percent of respondents cited they are likely to deploy server/desktop virtualisation software from VMware, Microsoft, or Citrix in the coming year. While Microsoft Hyper-V adoption is growing, according to respondents, VMware is still top of mind. Nearly 65 percent plan to deploy VMware, while only 10 percent have identified Hyper-V as their platform of choice.

Almost half (48 percent) of those surveyed are now taking advantage of storage virtualisation software to tackle the storage-related obstacles associated with their server and desktop virtualisation initiatives. Nearly three in four (74 percent) rely on it to improve disaster recovery and business continuity practices.

“Unanticipated storage costs, availability concerns, and performance bottlenecks are the most critical factors bringing server consolidation and desktop virtualisation projects to a standstill,” said George Teixeira, president and CEO of DataCore Software. “IT organisations in midsize and large organisations have turned to storage virtualisation software solutions like DataCore’s SANsymphony-V to overcome these operational and financial challenges by better leveraging existing storage assets and standard practices.”