Storage is another area commonly overlooked in virtual architectures. Like networking, storage is usually managed by a specialized team of engineers. When designing storage for a virtual solution, there are two primary elements to consider: capacity and throughput.
Capacity is a simple measurement of how much disk space is required. In our sizing spreadsheets we created earlier, we identified that we need 1,880 GB of space for our infrastructure and 1,480 GB of space for our workloads. Simply defining how much space you need, however, is not enough. You also need to consider the speed, or throughput, of that space (how fast the data is written or retrieved). Most enterprise storage systems involve tiered data schemes, allowing you to mix and match storage as appropriate for the workload at hand.
Let's assume we have four tiers of storage: Super high-speed flash storage, high-speed Solid State Disks (SSDs), moderate-speed serial attached...