Shopping for a Storage Area Network? Check Out These Questions to Make Your Decision a Bit Easier

Shopping for a Storage Area Network can be time consuming and tedious. Ensuring that a SAN will meet your telecommunication needs, asking yourself some important questions could be key. Check out some questions we think will help guide you in the right direction while choosing to switch to a SAN.

What is a Storage Area Network (SAN)?

A storage area network (SAN) is defined as a set of interconnected devices (e.g. disks and tapes) and servers that are connected to a common communication and data transfer infrastructure such as a fibre channel. The common communication and data transfer mechanism for a given deployment is commonly known as the storage fabric. The purpose of the SAN is to allow multiple servers access to a pool of storage in which any server can potentially access any storage unit. Clearly in this environment, management plays a large role providing security guarantees (who is authorized to access which devices) and sequencing or serialization guarantees (who can access which devices at what point in time).

Why use a SAN?

Storage area networks provide a broad range of advantages over locally connected devices. They allow compute units to be detached from storage units, thereby allowing flexible deployment and re-purposing of both servers and storage dynamically to suit the current business needs without having to be concerned about buying the right devices for a given server or without re-cabling a datacenter to attach storage to a given server.

Can a cluster be connected to a SAN?

Yes, Microsoft fully supports storage area networks both as part of the base Windows platform and as part of a complete Windows Clustering high availability solution.

Can a cluster co-exist on a SAN with other servers?

One or more Server clusters can be deployed in a single SAN environment along with standalone Windows servers and/or with other non-Windows platforms.