As the information is growing day by day, so need of high-end storage devices are in tremendous demand. For which many companies like EMC, HP, Hitachi, IBM, Dell etc are providing the solution world wide. Now this digital information which is created need to be stored, preserved and managed so that it can be used afterwords. Here Storage Area Network (SAN) come into picture which is basically a combination of computer’s and storage devices connected in a network.
What is Storage Area Network (SAN)
In simple words SAN is a high-speed, dedicated network of servers and shared storage devices and provides access to consolidated, block level data storage. A SAN typically has its own network of storage devices that are generally not accessible through the local area network by other devices.
Many of we often confuse between Storage Area Network (SAN) and Network Attached Storage (NAS). There is a very major difference between SAN and NAS. Storage Area Network is block level approach while NAS is a file level.
Though they can both be club to make a hybrid system.
Need of Storage Area Network (SAN)
Storage Area Network or SAN is required where there are large number of server’s and there is a huge production of information like in big MNC’s. To manage and store the increasing information efficiently SAN is used.
Advantages of Storage Area Network (SAN)
While talking about advantages of SAN, this whole post may be not enough so here we will only talk about some of the main advantages of Storage Area Network aka SAN which are listed below.
1. Greater performance.
2. Backup and Online Recovery
3. Increased disk utilization
4. Increased I/O performance
5. Less Number of Server’s are required
6. Cluster support
7. Storage Virtualization
8. Better disk utilization
Application of Storage Area Network (SAN)
SANs are primarily used to make storage devices, such as disk arrays, tape libraries, and optical jukeboxes, accessible to servers so that the devices appear like locally attached devices to the operating system. Major application of Storage Area Network or SAN is in Cluster application, Backup & data recovery, etc.