One thing is certain in the ever-changing landscape of IT: data volumes continue to grow, regardless of economic cycles. In many organizations, storage solutions that have been deployed to accommodate that growth have been deployed in an ad hoc fashion. Mergers and acquisitions have also contributed to this mix, creating infrastructure built upon multiple storage architectures. This blend of architectures can make managing storage needs a complex and costly process. Just as servers benefitted from virtualization, IT organizations can realize the same cost benefits from storage virtualization; in essence, hiding multiple separate storage controllers behind one centrally managed solution. ESG Lab conducted hands on testing of the NetApp V-Series Open Storage Controller with a focus on examining the storage efficiency, operational value, and performance achieved by the solution.