Storage Virtualization Takes Steps Toward Removing Barriers To Broader Adoption

By Jerome M Wendt, Lead Analyst and President, DCIG Inc.

Anyone wonder why storage virtualization is still growing relatively slowly while server virtualization platforms like VMware have gone on a tear? If so, a look at the licensing strategies that these two respective virtualization technologies have adopted provides some insight into why.

In server virtualization, once a software feature is licensed, it is available to all of the virtual machines (VMs) hosted by that server virtualization OS. Granted, there is a caveat in that the software license pricing is dependent upon the number of CPUs in the physical host. In the case of VMware, it licenses its software in pairs with 2, 4, 8 and 16 license combinations so the price does go up as more CPUs are added to the physical host.