At VMworld Europe last week, it did not take long for me to realize that storage vendors were not exactly singing Storage VMotion's praises. Instead, many storage vendors were still feeling Storage VMotion's sting. Why should they care about a new storage value-add in ESX 3.5? Vendors that offer storage virtualization as an integral part of their products have seen one of their key value-adds move to the ESX hypervisor and as a result see Storage VMotion as a threat to their bottom line. Most storage vendors I spoke with see VMware's competitors (namely Microsoft, Citrix, and Virtual Iron) as opportunities where they can partner with a virtualization vendor and still offer a valuable piece of the virtualization puzzle. That's not to say these vendors are jumping off the VMware bandwagon, yet. But they are dipping their toes in the waters of other virtualization vendors.

Read Chris' entire opinion on his blog at http://www.chriswolf.com/?p=142