Survey of 1200+ midmarket IT professionals indicates preference for hybrid storage to improve performance in virtualized environments; finds high return from strategic virtualization implementations

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Imation (NYSE:IMN), a global data storage and information security company, today shared research compiled from a survey of more than 1,200 IT professionals at small and mid-sized enterprises (SMEs) on competitive advantages achieved from server virtualization. Highlighting best practices for the use of storage systems to support virtualized environments, the complimentary report on the research, “State of Storage in Virtual Environments: Insights from the Midmarket,” can be downloaded at: www.nexsan.com/virtualizationreport.

“State of Storage in Virtual Environments: Insights from the Midmarket”

The report shows that organizations are increasingly turning to hybrid storage solutions to meet the performance and manageability demands of virtualized environments. In addition, the study finds that organizations that make broader commitments to virtualizing their environments yield a higher return in terms of storage optimization, performance and operational capabilities. Highlights include:

• Rise of hybrid storage systems: According to survey, 69 percent of respondents with greater than 250TB of virtualized storage are employing or planning to deploy a hybrid storage approach to meet storage demands of virtual servers – heavily randomized I/O operations, for instance. Given that hybrid storage systems are relatively new to market in the past four years, current and planned adoption rates are impressive.
• Dramatically improved consolidation ratios: Organizations that have virtualized at least 60 percent of their environment achieve a consolidation ratio – the average number of virtual machines residing on each physical server – of 16:1 or greater. This is double the ratio achieved by organizations with 20 percent or less of their operations virtualized.
• Increased adoption of virtualized applications: When asked about applications currently virtualized or that are planned to be virtualized, respondents with greater than 40 percent of their environments virtualized are virtualizing a far wider range of applications. This includes more specialized applications such as procurement, accounting and financial management.

• More effective use of virtualization tools needed: Use of VMware’s vSphere APIs for Array Integration (VAAI) could enable speed improvements of up to 80 percent in management operations, yet among respondents with less than 20 percent of the data center virtualized, a super-majority (80 percent) was unaware of the availability of VAAI. Only half of SMEs that have virtualized 80 to 100 percent of their environments have either activated VAAI or are actively considering it.

“The IT professionals who responded to this survey yielded insight into a simple truth: The more strategically organizations see virtualization as an enabling technology, the greater the benefits that they reap, not only in terms of storage optimization and performance but also other operational capabilities – consolidation, rapid deployment and reconfiguration of virtual machines to meet changing business needs,” said Mike Stolz, vice president of marketing and technical support for Imation’s Nexsan solutions. “These benefits directly correlate to business agility, greater efficiency and competitive advantage.”

“Imation brings storage technologies that were first available and affordable only to large enterprises within reach of organizations of any size that require optimized performance, reliability and manageability. This allows a wide array of organizations to benefit from storage-intensive data center efforts, such as server virtualization,” Stolz said. “Imation delivers unified, hybrid storage solutions built for simultaneous support of block and file architectures as well as solid-state storage, DRAM and disk - all within a single solution to support virtual environments without sacrificing performance.”

To download the State of Storage in Virtual Environments report, go to www.nexsan.com/virtualizationreport. Imation will hold a webinar discussing the report’s findings on Thursday, September 12. To register, visit http://www.nexsan.com/webinar.

Imation’s Nexsan portfolio features solid-state optimized unified hybrid storage systems, secure automated archive solutions and high-density enterprise storage arrays. This week at VMworld 2013 in San Francisco at its booth #847, Imation will demonstrate the Nexsan NST6530 unified hybrid storage system with NestOS™ 3.0 for the first time, showcasing the performance value of its FASTier™ caching technology. Imation will deploy multiple virtual machines in a single ESX server running different databases, simulating large scale, I/O intensive workloads against the NST6530 system, which will handle the workload easily without sacrificing performance.

For more information on the Nexsan NST Unified Hybrid Storage, visit: http://www.nexsan.com/en/products/NST-Series.aspx

About Imation

Imation (NYSE: IMN) is a global data storage and information security company. Our products and solutions help organizations and individuals store, manage and protect their digital content. Imation’s storage and security portfolio includes Nexsan high-density, archive and solid-state optimized unified hybrid storage solutions; IronKey mobile security solutions that address the needs of professionals for secure data transport and mobile workspaces; and consumer storage solutions, audio products and accessories sold under the Imation, Memorex and TDK Life on Record brands. Imation reaches customers in more than 100 countries through a powerful global distribution network. For more information, visit www.imation.com.

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Imation, Nexsan, NestOS, FASTier, IronKey and Memorex are trademarks of Imation Corp. All other trademarks are properties of their respective owners.