ABSTRACT
This chapter includes physical, virtual, cloud, DAS, SAN, and NAS, along with application and storage access such as block, file, object, and API, stacks, and layers, among other related themes. There are many types of environments, applications, and data, along with their corresponding attributes and characteristics. The importance of main memory and external storage is that virtual machines need memory to exist when active and a place on disk to reside when not in memory. Data infrastructure applications that have bits and bytes defined into data structures include storage partitions, volumes, logical unit numbers, file systems, databases, virtual machines, as well as data and object repositories that support storing and using data. Server storage data hierarchy extends from memory inside servers out to external shared storage including virtual, container, and cloud resources. Storage can be tiered with the applicable memory or storage technology and applied to the task at hand.
