Code360 powered by Coding Ninjas X Naukri.com. Code360 powered by Coding Ninjas X Naukri.com
Table of contents
1.
Introduction
2.
Data Virtualization and its Features
2.1.
Components of Data Virtualization
2.2.
Benefits of Data Virtualization
3.
Storage Virtualization and its Features
3.1.
Types of Storage Virtualization
3.2.
Storage Virtualization Methods
3.3.
Benefits of Storage Virtualization
4.
Frequently Asked Questions
4.1.
What do you understand by data federation?
4.2.
Mention some advantages of data virtualization that make them perfect for use in large enterprises.
4.3.
What is the requirement of storage virtualization in cloud computing?
4.4.
What do you mean by VMM?
5.
Conclusion
Last Updated: Mar 27, 2024

Data and Storage Virtualization

Author Naman Kukreja
0 upvote

Introduction

Data is a rising need in today’s world, and the amount of data used or stored is increasing daily. The data required by big companies is known as big data. Managing Big data is a difficult task in itself.

Data and Storage Virtualization makes it simpler and less expensive to store, retrieve, and analyze massive amounts of quick and diverse forms of data. Keep in mind that some huge data is unstructured and difficult to store using typical approaches.

big data

Further in this blog, we will learn about data and storage virtualization in detail, So let’s get on with our topic without wasting any further time.

Data Virtualization and its Features

📗Data virtualization software functions as a link between various disparate data sources, putting essential decision-making data into a single virtual location to drive analytics.

📘Data virtualization refers to a contemporary data layer that allows users to access, aggregate, transform, and distribute information at unprecedented cost and speed. Users may access data stored throughout the company, including conventional databases, big data sources,  IoT devices, and the cloud, utilizing data virtualization technology, which takes a fraction of the time and expense of physical warehousing and transforms/extract/load (ETL).

📗Users may use data virtualization to apply analytics to real-time data updates, including graphical, predictive, and streaming analytics. Thanks to integrated governance and security, data virtualization customers can ensure that their data is high-quality, consistent, and secure. Furthermore, data virtualization enables more business-friendly data by translating native IT structures and syntax into straightforward, IT-curated data services that are easier to locate and use through a self-service business directory.

📘Data virtualization may extend from project to enterprise size, supporting many lines of business, hundreds of projects, and thousands of users.

📗They use data virtualization to develop a dynamic, connected data services platform. Data can be found and connected thanks to a centralized reference source. Consequently, independent of the underlying physical database, data virtualization offers an abstract service that distributes data in a uniform format. Furthermore, data virtualization improves speed by exposing cached data to all apps.

Components of Data Virtualization

These are the components or capabilities required for the top functioning of data virtualization.

High-performance runtime The application sends a request, the optimized query runs a single statement, and the response is appropriately formatted. This functionality enables real-time data, improved speed, and less duplication.
Business Catalog/directory to make data easy to find Search and data categorization, accessing all accessible data, choosing from a directory of views, and engaging with it to enhance data quality and usefulness are all included in this capability. This feature provides additional data to business users, enhances IT/business user effectiveness, and makes data virtualization more broadly available.
Agile Development and Design You must be able to examine available data, uncover hidden connections, model personal views/services, verify views/services, and make necessary changes. These features help automate tedious tasks, reduce time to resolution, and promote object reuse.
Use of Caching The program makes a request, an efficient query (leveraging cached data) runs, and data is supplied in the correct format. This feature improves performance, eliminates network limitations, and ensures availability 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Benefits of Data Virtualization

There are many benefits of data virtualization here. We will discuss only some of the important ones.

Business insight improvement Data that is more complete, up-to-date, and easier to access and comprehend, with less work than ETL.
Development cost avoidance Reusable data services and interactive development and validation increase quality and reduce the need to rework new projects.
Business value acceleration As changes occur, analytics software may be used sooner, obtaining more value.
Data management infrastructure cost reduction Lower support and maintenance expenses derive from lower infrastructure costs and fewer licenses to acquire and depreciate.

A high-speed, virtualized data layer is the most valuable data virtualization solution. This layer enables rigorous administration and control while also providing self-service access to vital data, scaling it, and cost-effectively accessible to applications and analytics systems.

On the other hand, most data virtualization initiatives start modest and grow. Starting with a small, focused team entrusted with one or more projects is systematic. A small group may be adaptable while also tolerating some risks.

As the data layer is being constructed, the next stage offers project datasets. Several data issues are addressed in this stage, including changing needs, numerous sources, mixed data types, real-time data, data outside the warehouse, data too big to physically integrate, and data outside the firewall.

Teams must also prioritize their data virtualization initiatives according to their business value and simplicity of execution. The higher the project's priority, the better the business benefit and clarity of implementation. Data virtualization and the people who apply it must adapt to allow different data services in the application, business, and source layers to be reused.

Storage Virtualization and its Features

features

🟣Storage virtualization combines physical storage from numerous storage devices into what appears to be a single storage device — or pool of accessible storage capacity — that can be handled from a single location. The technique depends on software to discover and aggregate available storage capacity from physical devices into a pool of storage that may be utilized by classic architectural servers or virtual machines in a virtual environment (VMs).

🟣Virtual storage software intercepts input/output requests from physical or virtual computers. It routes them to the appropriate physical location of storage devices in the virtualized environment's overall storage pool. The virtual storage appears to the user as a single physical drive, share, or logical unit number (LUN) that may accept conventional reads and writes since the different storage resources that make up the pool are hidden from view.

🟣A software virtualization layer between a host personal computer (PC) and the hardware of a storage resource and a server or any device accessing the storage — is a fundamental kind of storage virtualization that allows operating systems (OSes) and applications to access and utilize the storage. Even a RAID array may be thought of as storage virtualization. Numerous physical drives in the array are shown to the user as a single storage device that stripes and duplicates data over multiple discs in the background to increase I/O performance and safeguard data if one drive dies.

Types of Storage Virtualization

There are mainly three types of storage virtualization. We will discuss all three of them in this section of the blog.

1️⃣Object-Level: Object storage does not save your data straight to the disc. It's been abstracted into data buckets instead. API calls from your application are used to retrieve this data. This may be a more scalable alternative than block storage for big volumes of data. You won't have to worry about running out of room once your buckets are set up.

2️⃣Block-Level: Virtualization is more common in storage resources accessible through a Fibre Channel (FC) or Internet Small Computer System Interface (iSCSI) storage area network (SAN) than in file-based storage systems. Block-based systems separate logical storage, such as a drive partition, from physical memory blocks in a storage device such as a hard disc drive (HDD) or solid-state memory device. Because it works in the same way as native drive software, there's less overhead for reading and writing operations. Hence block storage solutions will outperform file-based systems.

3️⃣File-Level: A specialized use case is file-based storage virtualization to network-attached storage (NAS) systems. File-based storage virtualization breaks the dependency in a traditional NAS array between the data being accessed and the location of physical memory by using the Server Message Block (SMB) or Common Internet File System (CIFS) protocols in Windows server environments or the Network File System (NFS) protocols for Linux systems. The pooling of NAS resources makes it simpler to manage background file migrations, which improves speed. NAS systems are often simple to operate, but storage virtualization makes controlling numerous NAS devices from a single administration console easier.

Storage Virtualization Methods

methods

Today, storage virtualization refers to the capacity amassed from several physical devices and then made accessible for reallocation in a virtualized environment. There are multiple ways to apply storage to the virtual environment, and we will discuss all these methods in this part of the blog.

1️⃣Host-Based Storage Virtualization: It is a software-based storage system often seen in HCI and cloud storage. In this virtualization, the host, or a hyper-converged system made up of several hosts, offers the guest machines with varied virtual drives, whether virtual machines in a corporate setting, physical servers, or PCs accessing file shares or cloud storage. Virtualization and administration are done entirely via software on the host, and material storage may be nearly any device or array. Virtualization features are incorporated into specific server operating systems, such as Windows Server Storage Spaces.

2️⃣Array-Based Storage Virtualization: The strategy in which a storage array functions as the primary storage controller and runs virtualization software, allowing it to pool the storage resources of other arrays and provide multiple kinds of physical storage for usage as storage tiers, is most generally referred to as virtualization. The actual location and particular array are concealed from the servers or users using the storage. A storage tier may consist of solid-state drives (SSDs) or hard disc drives (HDDs) on multiple virtualized storage arrays.

3️⃣Network-Based Storage Virtualization: It is the most often utilized form in businesses today. A network device, such as an intelligent switch or a purpose-built server, connects to all FC or iSCSI SAN storage devices and displays the storage as a single virtual pool.

Benefits of Storage Virtualization

There are many benefits of using storage virtualization. We will discuss some of them here:

Easier Management The time and effort required to administer physical systems are reduced by using a single management panel to monitor and maintain many virtualized storage arrays. Storage Virtualization is beneficial when the virtualization pool includes storage devices from several suppliers.
Better Storage Utilization Pooling storage capacity across several systems makes allocation simpler, allowing capacity to be assigned and utilized more effectively. With unconnected, heterogeneous systems, it's conceivable that some may be at or near capacity while others would be underutilized.
Add advanced features universally Tiering, caching, and replication are some of the more complex storage functions that may be implemented at the virtualization level. This helps standardize these practices across all member systems and may provide sophisticated functionalities to plans that would not have them otherwise.
Extends life of older systems By incorporating older storage equipment in the pool as a tier to handle archive or less essential data, virtualization provides an attractive option to prolong the utility of older storage equipment.

Frequently Asked Questions

What do you understand by data federation?

Data federation software provides the ability to aggregate and join disparate data sources so that they can be accessed virtually.

Mention some advantages of data virtualization that make them perfect for use in large enterprises.

Reduced data redundancy, faster user access, more responsiveness to changes, and decreased implementation time.

What is the requirement of storage virtualization in cloud computing?

Storage virtualization helps achieve data independence by using the physical location of the data in cloud computing.

What do you mean by VMM?

VMM refers to Virtual Machine Monitor. It is used for achieving hardware virtualization.

Conclusion

In this article, we have extensively discussed Data and Storage Virtualization with their components, types, network method, and the benefit of both virtualizations to understand why they are used in industries.

If you are interested in learning more about Big data, you must refer to this blog here. And if you want to learn more about how virtualization is connected with big data, you must refer to this blog here. You can check out our blogs on Top 100 SQL ProblemsInterview ExperiencesProgramming Problems, and  Guided Paths. You will get all the information from scratch and easily and understandably. If you would like to learn more, check out our articles on Code Studio.

 “Happy Coding!”

Live masterclass