what is Virtual Data Services?

Virtual Data Services

“Data services” is a catch-all phrase for all the interesting things that storage does: snapshots, cloning, replication, deduplication, caching, tiering, encryption, archiving, compliance, searching, and more. Data services represent much of the “intelligence” found in storage arrays today. Virtual data services are those that are completely abstracted from the underlying storage medium and are applied to precise application boundaries.

In the VMware SDS model, data services are composed and applied along with precise application containers (i.e., virtual machine) boundaries — no more, and no less. Exact combinations of data services can be dynamically created and changed as needed. The implementation of these data services may be done by the storage array (as is the norm today), or by a newer class of data services that operate entirely in software.

For storage services implemented in software, the resources used to provide storage services (compute, memory, network, disk, flash) are also managed by the control plane, providing the opportunity for dynamic sizing of resources used for storage services.