In an article titled "Managing the complexities of storage virtualization" the Computer World magazine explains the sides of storage virtualization solutions The magazine says that its benefits bring added layers of complexity.

Read the article in CW. We will offer you here only a short table titled "Virtualization Pain Relievers"

1. Be realistic: This is going to be complicated.

2. Assign someone on staff who really knows the technology, or hire a consultant, at least at the beginning.

3. Do your homework. Read the documentation and understand the pieces and their interfaces.

4. Be sure that your gear and their interfaces are certified by your vendor(s) for the versions/releases that you have.

5. Consider upgrading your old storage gear when you go to storage virtualization.

6. Make sure you have thoughtful policies and procedures for maintenance and backups.

7. Guard against "virtual sprawl" (of both storage and servers).

8. Ask yourself: Do I really need this?