What is SAN storage and how it works?

Thomastech

A storage area network (SAN) is a dedicated, independent high-speed network that ties and delivers shared pools of storage devices to multiple servers. Each server can approach shared storage as if it were a drive straight attached to the server. A SAN is usually assembled with cabling, host bus adapters, and SAN switches attached to storage arrays and servers. Each switch and storage system on the SAN must be unified.

Definition of SAN

A SAN (storage area network) is a network of storage devices that can be retrieved by several servers or computers, providing a shared pool of storage space. Each and every computer on the network can access storage on the SAN as though they were local disks linked directly to the computer.

What is a SAN switch?

A SAN switch is hardware that links servers to shared pools of storage devices. It is devoted to moving storage traffic in a SAN.

SAN benefits

The one question which always raises by the companies that “what are the major benefits of SAN?”

• High performance. The standard SAN uses an individual network fabric that is dedicated to storage tasks. The fabric is traditionally FC for highest performance, though iSCSI and converged networks are also available.

• High scalability. The SAN can support very large deployments encompassing thousands of SAN host servers and storage devices or even storage systems. New hosts and storage can be added as required to build out the SAN to meet the administration's specific necessities.

• High availability. A traditional SAN is built on the idea of a network fabric, which ideally interconnects all to everything else. This means a full-featured SAN deployment has no single point of failure between a host and a storage device, and contact across the fabric can always find an alternate path to maintain storage availability to the workload.

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