Clouds gather over Storage Expo

Virtualisation is set to be a recurring theme at Storage Expo 2009, say the organisers

Storage Expo 2009 will feature a cloud zone for the first time

Storage Expo 2009 is taking place next week at London’s Olympia, and features a virtualisation and cloud zone for the first time.

Research carried out by the organisers reveals that 90 per cent of UK firms have already migrated or are planning to migrate to a virtualised environment to help improve their disaster recovery options.

A total of 400 IT professionals were asked whether their current system management and monitoring tools were able to support virtualisation. While 23 per cent said their tools were adequate, 67 per cent admitted they were investing in new tools to help manage a virtualised infrastructure.

In addition, 95 per cent of respondents said storage area networks already form (30 per cent) or will form (65 per cent) part of their virtualised infrastructure.

Nathalie Booth, event director at Storage Expo, said: “The research also found that while security is holding back 30 per cent of firms, 60 per cent plan to invest in new technology to tackle the security problems created by the migration to a virtual environment.”

Tony Lock, programme director at analyst Freeform Dynamics, who is also a keynote speaker, said: “By placing multiple applications on a single server or accessing a single resource pool of storage, the resilience of the physical platforms becomes very important.

“In ‘pre-virtualisation’ days, if a single x86 server failed, only one group of users was likely to be affected. If a virtual server dies, it can potentially take with it a number of applications and a much higher number of users.”

There will be a dedicated channel zone at the event, with stands from vendors such as CA, Brocade, Compellent, Datacore, Microsoft, StorageCraft, Pillar Data Systems and Iron Mountain Digital, to name but a few.