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Storage is a very important part of any server installation. However, given the continuing growth of customer data, even small businesses are starting to find it practical and affordable to work with a solution provider to migrate storage onto its own separate SAN.
A SAN is a common pool of storage configured to be accessible by multiple servers. SAN-based storage is typically connected via a Fibre Channel network, which requires the additional purchase of Fibre Channel host bus adapters (HBAs) and at least one Fibre Channel switch. However, for the small-business space, the use of iSCSI for SANs is growing because while iSCSI performance may not reach that of Fibre Channel in most cases, the storage can be served over a business's existing TCP/IP network. A SAN is typically built using high-availability components with hot-plug capability to prevent downtime and loss of data in the event that an error or hardware failure occurs.
SANs offer many benefits over more standard storage solutions. A SAN allows multiple storage subsystems to be handled and managed as a single pool of storage. This greatly simplifies the management of the storage pool and also makes more efficient use of all the available storage capacity. The capacity of a SAN can be increased whenever necessary, simply by adding more storage capacity to the existing drive arrays or by adding more drive arrays to the storage pool. In addition, portions of a SAN can be provisioned off as necessary to different users, departments and groups. Each user or group will see their portion as basically being their own drive.
For heavy storage users, a benefit of a Fibre Channel SAN is that storage traffic is kept off the main user network, thus making the main network more efficient for users.
In its most basic form, a Fibre Channel SAN consists of one or more storage arrays connected to one or more servers via fiber-optic cable. The array must contain Fibre Channel controllers, and the servers must contain Fibre Channel HBAs. Everything then is interconnected using one or more Fibre Channel switches.
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