Working With A Storage Area Network and How It Can Help You!

 
A storage area network (SAN) is a dedicated network that provides access to consolidated block level data storage. Primarily used to make storage devices such as disk arrays, tape librarys and optical jukeboxes, SANs are accessible to servers so that the devices appear like locally attached devices to the operating system.

A SAN typically has its own network of storage devices that are not usually accessible through the local area network by other devices. When performance, redundancy and availability matter, SAN storage offers three tiers of storage that let you pay for only what you need. SAN eliminates any single point of failure and provides access to the customer portal for ordering, editing LUNs and accessing performance statistics.

When should I use SAN solutions?

• Databases
• Server Clustering
• Messaging applications such as Microsoft Exchange
• High I/O, transaction-intensive applications

Advantages of SAN solutions:

• High performance block-level storage
• File-system agnostic
• Supported by most clustering technologies (Microsoft, RedHat, Vmware)
• Dedicated storage bandwidth

There are many benefits to implementing a SAN, including the ability to pool disk storage resources and the sharing of storage at the block level instead of the file or directory level.