|
|
Why Users Deploy SANs
Reduce
storage complexity. The need to do more with less is
the most frequent driver of SAN investments. Users indicated that
reducing storage complexity includes bringing storage to one
location; standardizing on suppliers; reducing the number of
physical units to manage; and gaining simplified storage management.
Save money.
Users save operational costs and reduce capital invested by
eliminating stranded capacity. According to Gartner Group,
disk utilization averages only 40 percent with direct-attached
storage. With a SAN, utilization rates can often be doubled.
Improve backup.
Networks allow a single backup strategy and uniform and consistent
data protection. SAN-connected arrays often offer a snapshot data
copy facility that allows backup to occur concurrently with no
impact on the network or users.
Improve performance.
SANs offer high-speed paths between servers and storage for fast
response and rapid data transfer.
Better data management.
Data sharing and data consolidation management for a group of
servers as a single pool is significantly better than managing the
storage for each server individually. Also with pooled storage,
adding capacity can be done “on the fly” with no downtime.
Better availability.
SANs provide redundant data paths between servers and storage and
support redundant server clusters and RAID arrays with failover
capability. The result is near continuous data availability.
Investment
Protection. Ethernet is designed to be backward
compatible as newer, faster pipes become available. This is why
10/100 interfaces work with GigE networks. And, today's IPSAN will
work with 10GigE as it becomes available over the coming years. |
The growth of business data continues to explode, along with the need to
store it. Workers generate more and more email messages and file attachments,
users demand instant access to data like never before, IT managers install more
storage-hungry applications, and aging paper-based data continues to be
converted to digital form. Information growth is so intense, in fact, that
spending on data storage is expected to outstrip server spending this year.
For years, adding storage meant purchasing additional servers, tape
libraries, and other Direct-Attached
Storage (DAS) enclosures to attach to the server - a costly and inefficient
approach that left large amounts of storage capacity and computing power
unused. Next came the strategy of adding dedicated Network Attached Storage
(NAS) file servers. However, NAS has many limitations. As the first NAS
box reaches its capacity, the NAS becomes a bottleneck and a single point of
failure. Also, NAS is suited only for file storage, not for today’s more
complex applications such as Microsoft Exchange or databases such as Microsoft
SQL. Previously, the only other option for IT departments was
Fibre Channel Storage Area Networks (SAN). A SAN will write from the
block-level, making this a good choice for databases and email. However, fibre
is not a mainstream network infrastructure and thus prohibitively
expensive for in most businesses.
In a world where
Internet Protocol (IP) dominates local and wide area networks, and data storage
requirements grow unabated, it was inevitable that these two converged. The
iSCSI protocol unites storage and IP networking. An iSCSI SAN works off
your existing network and provides all the benefits of a higher-cost fibre
channel SAN at a fraction of the cost: infinite scalability of storage for a
server or group of servers; capacity consolidation across storage devices;
aggregation of storage allowing higher utilization; offloading of storage
traffic from the main LAN; local or remote disaster recovery; disk-to-disk
backup, snapshots, and failover.
If you are interested in
a iSCSI SAN solution for your business, call CompuData at 800.223.3282.
|
