Chapter . Virtualizing Data Centers

Growth of the Data Center

As the Internet, e-commerce, and application usage grow, the corporate data center is experiencing an explosion of growth. A number of factors are involved:

  • Every new application, website, or collaboration approach requires more storage and more servers—the powerful computers where applications run.

  • Past data from transactions can be just as valuable as new data, so it is hard to get rid of. It just keeps accumulating, so storage tends to need exponential additions to keep up with demand.

  • Regulatory and industry compliance adds mandates for keeping more and more data for longer and longer. Again, this leads to the need for more storage.

  • For disaster preparedness, many companies are investing ...

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