Monitoring Physical Storage Beneath the Virtual Infrastructure

Virtual infrastructures add layers of abstraction that hide key physical storage performance information. When virtual machines (VMs) or entire virtual infrastructures begin to perform poorly, virtual administrators can’t see beyond logical datastores to determine if physical storage components (i.e. switches, LUNs, arrays and filers) are actually causing the problem. Conversely, traditional storage administrators can’t see which VMs are overloading their physical storage devices, making it difficult to properly balance storage resources across entire virtual infrastructures.

This technical brief covers both the obstacles and proposed solutions in identifying and resolving storage related issues in virtualized environments quickly and accurately.