Robin Harris has an interesting post:
The Virtual Machine I/O Blender
In the post he brings up the topic of what Virtual Machines do to the pieces of the storage puzzle that have have been optimized based upon traditional I/O patterns. Does the Empirical data gained through the years help at all when you pile virtual machines on it? Looks like the answer is: Not so much. Which brings up the argument about 'stupid vs smart' storage. So fast dumb storage would be preferable to fast smart storage it seems when you're in the virtual machine arena. It's an interesting idea. Should we purchase lots of (presumably) cheaper 'dumb' storage or bigger/faster smart storage? Reminds me of the commodity server hardware vs high-end server hardware argument from a few years back. The price point won the day back then, and I suspect if storage goes the same way, it will rule storage too. There's no universal rule on what will be best for all situations, so there will be room in the market for DMX's and Tagmas, but I suspect cheaper/dumb-ish storage with VM's in mind is going to start to creep into the market place. It'll focus on random I/Os rather than trying guess via-caching what the host is going to ask for next.
If you get a chance, check out Robin's article. In particular, read the comments. Even more good thoughts in there.
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