How the future of data storage will stack up

An IT industry analyst article published by SearchStorage.

In the near future, data storage won’t be a passive player as it integrates more closely with applications and workloads.

In a previous column, [we] wrote that the concept of LUNs is dead or at least dying as the primary way storage will be managed in the future. This has become evident with the emergence and increased adoption of products offering advanced virtual machine (VM)-centric storage. Shifting the focus from LUNs to VMs changes the storage game for VM administrators who can continue to work with constructs they understand directly, storage folks who have to elevate their service offerings, and even those pesky end users who might benefit from increased performance and availability (and hopefully lower costs).

You could view the end of the LUN as a consequence of industry commoditization of low-level array functionality as storage vendors compete to offer better, higher-level products; or you might chalk it up to a highly competitive marketplace where the most efficient and effective IT can help win the day. Either way, we think it’s inevitable that storage solutions will keep evolving up the stack. The big question is what comes next. What are the next valuable levels as one climbs the storage stack? Let’s start with familiar storage types and work up to some possible future storage solutions…

…(read the complete as-published article there)