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==Characteristics==
Characteristics of software-defined storage may include the following features:<ref name="hype">{{cite web |title=Software-defined storage: The reality beneath the hype |date= March 12, 2013 |author= Simon Robinson |work= Computer Weekly |url= http://www.computerweekly.com/opinion/Software-defined-storage-The-reality-beneath-the-hype |accessdate= November 7, 2013 }}</ref>
* Abstraction of logical storage services and capabilities from the underlying physical storage systems, and in some cases pooling across multiple different implementations. Since data movement is relatively expensive and slow compared to computation and services
** [[Storage virtualization]], the generalized category of approaches and historic products. External-controller based arrays include storage virtualization to manage usage and access across the drives within their own pools. Other products exist independently to manage across arrays and/or server DAS storage.
** Virtual volumes (VVols), a proposal from [[VMware]] for a more transparent mapping between large volumes and the VM disk images within them, to allow better performance and data management optimizations. This does not reflect a new capability for virtual infrastructure administrators (who can already use, for example, NFS) but it does offer arrays using [[iSCSI]] or [[Fibre Channel]] a path to higher admin leverage for cross-array management apps written to the virtual infrastructure.
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===Server vs. storage hypervisor===
An analogy can be drawn between the concept of a server hypervisor and the concept of a storage hypervisor. By virtualizing servers, server hypervisors ([[VMware ESX]], [[Microsoft Hyper-V]], Citrix Hypervisor, [[Linux KVM]], [[Xen]], [[z/VM]]) increased the utilization rates for server resources, and provided management flexibility by de-coupling servers from hardware. This led to cost savings in server infrastructure since fewer physical servers were needed to handle the same workload, and provided flexibility in administrative operations like backup, failover and disaster recovery.
A storage hypervisor does for storage resources what the server hypervisor did for server resources. A storage hypervisor changes how the server hypervisor handles storage I/O to get more performance out of existing storage resources, and increases efficiency in storage capacity consumption, storage provisioning and snapshot/clone technology. A storage hypervisor, like a server hypervisor, increases performance and management flexibility for improved resource utilization.
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