Chapter 5. Network and Storage

In the world of virtualization, networking and storage can be put into two categories:

• Physical: A network and storage infrastructure that is built with the help of a host system to provide networking and storage needs for the virtual machines. In the case of networking, this includes layer 3 and 2 components of the network, software bridge, iptables rules, and so on. In the case of storage, this includes storage devices to provide storage to hypervisor (SAN, ISCSI, and so on), LVM, different file systems, NFS, and so on.
• Virtual: A network and storage infrastructure, which is created with the help of virtualization software; it includes both emulated and paravirtualized network and storage devices created inside the VM and the virtual devices created on the host to provide network a connectivity and storage to the VMs.

When you imagine your virtualization infrastructure in these terms, it is easy to understand the whole setup. This approach is also...