Storage area network has become a very popular and reliable storage solution for many types of users. They can serve the purposes connected with functioning of small or medium businesses as well as different types of government and non-government organizations. IT producers have been launching SAN devices and software based on many different SAN solution, which offer speedy and high capacity systems for enterprise data storage. SAN system uses blocks to enable access to data. It is based on a dedicated network which handles only storage operations, without wasting transfer or capacity on other services.
SAN solutions have many advantages which improve system’s high availability and secure business continuity. Apart from a set of physical devices, SAN systems can include virtualised resources and span a distant location containing a secondary storage array. This enables storage replication either implemented by disk array controllers, by server software, or by specialized SAN devices. The most common storage area network solution uses the SCSI protocol which allows for sending SCSI messages from iSCSI initiators to iSCSI targets. This solution enables communication between servers and disk drive devices. It is also possible to create a mapping layer to other protocols. In this way, other types of networks available for SAN solutions are Fibre Channel Protocol (FCP), Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), HyperSCSI, mapping of SCSI over Ethernet, iSCSI, mapping of SCSI over TCP/IP or over InfiniBand.
SANs solutions enable more effective disaster recovery processes. IP wide area networks are often the least costly method of long-distance transport, therefore Fibre Channel over IP and iSCSI protocols have been developed to allow SAN extension over IP networks. The SAN system allows a quick and easy replacement of the server which underwent a hardware or software failure since the SAN system can be immediately reconfigured.
Another attractive SAN solution is the possibility of creating SAN/NAS structure by connecting network attached storage to SAN infrastructure. This will allow file as well as block level access to storage resources for users of both networks.
