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Storage area networks (SANs) is a high speed connection used for the transformation of data between storage devices and file servers, whereas a storage device may include a disk drives, disk controllers and any other cabling. Naturally fiber optic cables are used to connect the file servers, disk controllers and hard drives at rate more than 1 gigabit per second. The benefits of separating the storage media from the fileserver are flexibility and centralization and hence lessen the effort of supervision.
SANs are working well in LAN environments and now the companies are providing these services in MAN environment but SANs services are not being incorporated yet with WAN due to the connection type and access speeds required.
Following are some advantages of SANs.
■ Fast performance. ■ Data is centralized so the supervision is easy. ■ High availability due to the redundancy features available. ■ Low overhead (uses a thin protocol). ■ Distances can span up to 10 kilometers. There are also some disadvantages of SANs, the major drawback is their cost. You have to purchase special disk controller cards, a SAN storage unit and you must lay down the fiber. You only need to buy a storage media and lay down cabling for it if you have your own network infrastructure. Your cost will increase as if you are concerned about redundancy, the cost will increase because you need to confirm that there are redundant paths between your servers and SAN storage. |
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