Storage is one of the biggest challenges in server virtualization. This sometimes presents a barrier for small businesses wanting to benefit from virtualization technologies. One technique that can be used for smaller environments is direct attached storage (DAS). Some of the benefits of DAS include:
- DAS is among the least expensive ways to add large amounts of storage to a server
- There is no storage networking to administer
- Local array controllers on modern servers are relatively powerful
- Storage direct attached will be accessed quite fast over SAS or a direct fiber channel connection
There are some negatives to used DAS as well. Rick Vanover wrote a nice article detailing some of the steps necessary to get DAS working in a Microsoft Hyper-V environment as well as the positives and negatives.