Kbase P73934: What is a SAN (Storage Area Networks)?
| Autor |
Progress Software Corporation - Progress |
| Acesso |
Público |
| Publicação |
2/4/2005 |
|
Status: Verified
GOAL:
What is a SAN (Storage Area Networks)?
GOAL:
Storage Area Networks
FIX:
SANs are dedicated networks that provide access to an array of storage devices such as RAID arrays, optical disks, and tape backups.
One way to think of a SAN is as a high-speed network within a data center. In contrast, LANs extend outward from the data center.
A typical SAN consists of a Fibre Channel subnetwork connected to the enterprise network.
SANs are a radical shift from the traditional server-attached storage because storage is offloaded from servers, freeing up server resources to handle data processing and other tasks.
The following organizations promote SANs, storage products, and interconnect technologies. Getting all the pieces of SANs to work together in an interoperable way is the goal of these groups:
SNIA (Storage Networking Industry Association)
SNIA promotes storage network systems (a SAN by another name). The association is a central point of contact for the SAN industry and is involved in the development of SAN standards.
http://www.snia.org.
Fibre Channel Industry Association
This organization promotes Fibre Channel. Its Web site has a technology section that fully defines how Fibre Channel is used in the SAN environment.
http://www.fibrechannel.org/.
FibreAlliance
The FibreAlliance was formed by a group of storage companies, including EMC Corporation, with the goal of ensuring Fibre Channel SAN management standards, enabling heterogeneous interoperability, and developing methods for managing large-scale enterprise Fibre Channel SANs.
http://www.fiberalliance.com/.
Jiro
Jiro is a Sun Microsystems technology that provides a set of Java and Jini application development interfaces for creating intelligent management services that deploy across network devices, software applications, systems, and storage. Jiro technology provides a set of base management services and the architecture required to manage a SAN. Jiro was formerly called Project StoreX.