A virtual dataroom (VDR) allows you to securely share documents online with many parties in M&A due-diligence, M&A, and other financial transactions. VDRs have a variety features that make them more valuable for dealmakers than cloud storage tools and other document sharing applications. They also place a premium on security, which makes them better for sensitive business data than consumer cloud services which have a few security features.

Storage virtualization is the software abstraction layer that connects physical storage devices and applications. It allows for more efficient and flexible storage resource utilization by decreasing the need for hardware redundancy, simplifying data migrations, and streamlining more advanced management functions like replicas and snapshots. It can also cut costs by eliminating the need to forecast the future storage requirements and to purchase all needed capacity upfront, or purchase and maintain multiple devices to accommodate the growth.

Network-based storage virtualization is the most common type of virtualized storage. It takes a pool storage, like disks in a Fibre Channel (FC) or Internet Small Computer System Interface (iSCSI) storage area network (SAN) and then exposes it to servers and applications on the network. It often makes use of redundant array of independent disks (RAID) technology to enhance performance and protect data in the event that one disk fails, but the specific physical location of the disk as well as the hardware that is underlying it are hidden this content from users and applications.

Array-based storage virtualization goes to the next step, using storage controllers to combine the storage of different arrays and display it as a single pool to applications. This allows enterprises to use storage tiers at lower costs that could include hard disk drives as well as solid-state drives of different capacities. They can also hide the physical location from the eyes of servers and users.