Virtualization For Dummies®

Chapter 11. Creating a Virtualized Storage Environment

In This Chapter

• Looking at storage fundamentals

• Investigating your storage options

• Linking storage choices to different types of virtualization

• Evaluating your evolving storage needs

One of the most important decisions you'll make about your virtualization project is where to store virtual machine data. You have a number of options, each with positives and negatives. Moreover, the type of storage you use will affect your virtualization options; certain storage types will constrain your ability to continue further down the road on your virtualization journey. Of course, no storage decision is set in stone. You can always change where and how your data is stored, but it's better to understand all your storage choices before making a decision.

This chapter begins by describing the different types of storage available. It then moves on to describe how a virtualization solution interacts with storage. Understanding the relationship between storage and the different types of virtualization is important because, depending on which virtualization solution you choose, you'll be guided in one direction or another in terms of your storage choice. The chapter concludes with a discussion about how the virtualization journey — your virtual life farther down the road, as it were — can impact your storage choices.

Storage Overview

If you're like many (if not most) computer users, you've happily gone about your life without ever thinking of something ...