Converged storage

[2] The traditional model requires discrete provisioning changes, such as upgrades and planned migrations, in the face of server load changes, which are increasingly dynamic with virtualization, where converged storage increases the supply of resources along with new VM demands in parallel.

Server and storage can be managed as a resource pool, for example in infrastructure- as-a-service (IaaS).

Industry standard servers, such as those using Intel processors (x86), form the basis of converged storage.

VSA products from companies such as HP, Nutanix and VMware allow users to build storage-area networks using their existing servers.

[12][13][14][15] The goal of IaaS is to provide a pool of resources[16] that can be quickly deployed to deliver new services.

[20] At the file system level, parallel file systems like BeeGFS are available to provide a single namespace with automatic data distribution for shared network access across the internal storage devices of multiple servers.

[22] Storage analyst company, Enterprise Strategy Group, writes that scale-out storage can help to provide timely IT provisioning, improve system availability and provide better resource utilization.

[27] Monolithic storage architectures share RAM across multiple IO controllers.

However once you have more than a single system this architecture is complex and requires investment to manage and control the interactions between the different components.