Modernizing Virtualization: Six Reasons Why Storage is the Critical Success Factor

How can a virtualization platform be built to operate with true performance, scalability, and economic efficiency? Today, the decisive lever often lies at the storage level. In modern IT environments, it is frequently not the computing power, but rather the speed of data access that has the greatest impact on application performance.

Storage solutions determine how efficiently workloads run, how well resources can be utilized, and how flexibly the IT organization can respond to new requirements. Anyone looking to sustainably modernize their virtualization infrastructure must therefore understand storage as an integral part of the overall platform architecture and align their strategy accordingly.

There are six key reasons why storage plays a crucial role in the success of modernization projects in the virtualization space today.

1. Cloud native workloads require dynamic, API-driven storage

Containerized applications and Kubernetes-based platforms have fundamentally different storage requirements than traditional VM environments. Applications are ephemeral, and individual pods are dynamically scaled and moved across nodes as needed. The storage solution must be able to map this lifecycle. Persistent volumes should be dynamically provisioned and reattached as required, ideally automated via standardized APIs.

Kubernetes defines a vendor-independent standard for this with the Container Storage Interface (CSI), enabling the integration of various storage backends. SUSE Virtualization and SUSE Storage utilize this Kubernetes-native approach: storage is controlled via declarative resources such as Persistent Volumes and Storage Classes and is seamlessly integrated into the orchestration layer. This allows containerized and virtual workloads to be operated consistently.

2. Disparate storage stacks prevent end-to-end automation

In classic 3-tier architectures, storage systems are often connected via proprietary interfaces. Provisioning, snapshot management, or replication occur outside the actual platform, often manually or via separate, non-integrated tools. This significantly hinders the implementation of modern GitOps and DevOps approaches, as infrastructure changes cannot be fully represented and versioned as code.

SUSE Virtualization integrates storage functionality directly into the platform and uses Kubernetes-native mechanisms for lifecycle management. In combination with SUSE Storage, this creates a unified control plane for compute, network, and storage. The result: The entire infrastructure—including storage—can be defined declaratively, deployed automatically, and seamlessly integrated into GitOps and DevOps processes.

3. Software-defined storage decouples data management from hardware

Software-defined storage (SDS) abstracts the data plane from the underlying hardware. Instead of dedicated storage appliances, distributed storage clusters are operated on standard hardware. This enables flexible scaling and reduces dependency on proprietary systems.

SUSE Storage embraces this approach and integrates storage into the platform via Kubernetes-native mechanisms. Combined with SUSE Virtualization, this results in hyper-converged architectures where compute and storage resources are operated on the same infrastructure and scaled together. Storage is provided as part of the platform. Resources can be dynamically assigned, expanded, and controlled via declarative mechanisms. Applications access a shared, distributed storage pool that holds data redundantly depending on the configuration, thereby increasing availability and resilience.

4. CSI enables the integration of existing enterprise storage systems

Not every virtualization environment is built from scratch. Many companies already operate high-performance SAN or NAS systems that have grown over years and are optimized for specific workloads. A complete replacement is often neither economically sensible nor technically necessary.

Via CSI, existing enterprise storage systems can be integrated into Kubernetes in a standardized way—vendor-independent and without deep intervention in the existing infrastructure. The prerequisite is that the respective manufacturer provides a CSI driver, which is now the case for most common enterprise systems. SUSE Virtualization supports CSI natively, enabling hybrid scenarios where existing storage systems continue to be used while new cloud native architectures are simultaneously established. This protects existing investments and enables a step-by-step modernization.

5. A shared storage layer simplifies operations

In many IT environments, VMs and containerized applications are still operated separately with different storage backends, separate operational processes, and inconsistent security and backup policies. This significantly increases operational overhead.

SUSE Virtualization is based on KubeVirt, which treats virtual machines as native Kubernetes resources. In combination with SUSE Storage, VMs and containers access the same storage layer and can be managed, automated, and monitored via unified mechanisms. The decisive advantage lies in operations: instead of parallel toolchains and processes, a consistent operating model is created. Provisioning, snapshot management, and replication follow uniform rules for all workloads. This directly impacts operating costs, error sources, and the speed at which teams can respond to requirements.

6. Modern storage architectures close the performance gap to classic systems

Performance was long one of the central arguments against software-defined storage. Early SDS implementations often couldn’t keep up with dedicated SAN systems in terms of latency and I/O throughput. This became a dealbreaker, especially for database-intensive or transaction-critical workloads.

With the Longhorn V2 Data Engine, currently available as a preview, SUSE addresses exactly this point. The V2 Engine introduces a newly developed data path architecture based on the Storage Performance Development Kit (SPDK). Storage operations run directly in the user space—bypassing the Linux kernel storage stack. This eliminates the context-switching overhead of classic storage pipelines and supports dedicated CPU cores for storage I/O.

Initial benchmarks of the new storage engine show two to four times faster write performance and two to three times faster random read performance compared to the V1 engine. With further optimizations such as the UBLK frontend and multi-queue support, values up to ten times higher than V1 are achievable in certain scenarios. For platforms like SUSE Virtualization, this represents a major step forward. A unified, software-defined infrastructure can now performantly support demanding, stateful workloads like analytics or AI pipelines without separate storage silos and without the compromises of earlier SDS generations.

Learn more in our Storage Webinar

How to implement future-proof storage architectures with SUSE Virtualization and SUSE Storage from hyper-converged scenarios to the integration of existing systems via CSI will be shown in our webinar on 16 April.

Register now and learn how to specifically optimize storage for VMs, containers, and hybrid environments—including best practices for performance, data security, and cost efficiency.

To the Webinar: “Storage Optimized: How SUSE Virtualization Accelerates Your Infrastructure“