Mr. SANman, bring me some storage
July 16, 2010
What is a SAN, exactly – and why should you care?
A SAN, or Storage Area Network, is a high-performance network whose main purpose is to enable storage devices to communicate with computers in your network and with each other. SANs can help make sharing data among systems far more efficient.
If you have more than one server in your network, each server has its own hard drives, and therefore its own set of data – this is the traditional method of data storage in a network. In the traditional setting, if Server B needs data stored on Server A, it has to get a copy of that data by some method. Moving and managing this data not only requires computing resources, it can mean that some servers are working with outdated copies of data. These technical inefficiencies turn into cost inefficiencies for your business.
A SAN, on the other hand, changes the rules by allowing all computers access to all the data, because your data is all stored on the SAN, not on individual servers’ hard drives. This is the most important advantage of a SAN: universal connectivity of storage devices and computers. The best SANs are engineered for seamless growth, meaning that additional storage can be added as your needs grow, without interrupting your workflow.
Coupled with the power of virtual computing, SANs can also speed disaster recovery by enabling a business to replace a failed server in an hours rather than days, as can be the case with backup tapes and replacement equipment. SANs also employ several types of redundancy, so that failure of a single disk or controller does not prevent access to your data.
Not so long ago, SAN technology was only for the “big boys” – though a SAN can offer significant long-term savings, deploying a SAN was an expensive proposition.
The good news is that room for growth, high availability and disaster recovery are no longer out of reach. Costs for storage and for SANs have come down at the same time the data storage needs for small and medium businesses have risen dramatically. HP now offers smaller businesses competitive options for deploying SANs with their line of StorageWorks Generation 2 products.
As one of the first technology service providers in the region to offer virtualization and SAN technologies, SPINEN has extensive experience in assessing your network and helping you deploy a storage solution that meets current needs, and can grow with you. Contact us today to find out more about how we can put SAN technology to work for you.
