Storage area networks (SANs) have become necessary to keep up with the ever-increasing storage capacity needs while maintaining data performance and manageability. Your SAN architecture should be able to provide a high degree of scalability in terms of capacity, performance and number of servers supported. Storage virtualization helps fulfill these requirements through consolidation and uniform management. This paper discusses storage virtualization, several techniques used to accomplish it and how MTI accomplishes Inherent Storage Virtualization. (March 2001)