Businesses of all sizes are receiving great benefits from virtualizing their servers. Saving money is an easy decision, which has made deploying free versions of server virtualization the most popular IT project in recent times, both for test/dev and in production. In addition to cost savings, virtualization also offers huge flexibility and availability benefits that help IT managers maintain service levels for their business managers. These features however have not always been affordably priced in a way where small businesses could use them in production.
Server virtualization also presents a new challenge for small businesses specific to storage. Shared infrastructure is required to connect all resources and enable motion and mobility of applications. Without shared storage, IT managers cannot move VMs within and between physical servers, and thus cannot use the power of virtualization to automatically move applications in the event of an issue. Historically only larger enterprises could afford the combination of SAN storage and Enterprise virtualization software to fully utilize mobility and high availability (HA) features.
The following video discusses server virtualisation using Citrix XenServer and how it can benefit from shared storage such as the DroboElite.
For more details and information about Drobo storage solutions, please view the following PDF: A Zen State of Mind is Easier to Achieve with Citrix's XenServer.