What is a SAN fabric?
The SAN fabric is an area of the network that contains routers and switches. A Storage Area Network (SAN) is configured into a number of zones. A device that uses the SAN can communicate only with devices that are included in the same zones that it is in.
What are SAN topologies?
SAN stands for Storage Area Network and like all networks SANs can be configured in a variety of physical and logical layouts referred to as a topology. These networks use a fiber channel fabric which is designed specifically to manage communication between storage devices and servers or workstations.
What does a SAN consist of?
SANs are typically composed of hosts, switches, storage elements, and storage devices that are interconnected using a variety of technologies, topologies, and protocols. SANs may also span multiple sites. A SAN presents storage devices to a host such that the storage appears to be locally attached.
What is SAN Design?
“SAN Design Basics” on page 11. SAN Basics. A SAN is a specialized high-speed network of storage devices and switches connected to computer systems. This white paper refers to the computer systems as servers or hosts. A SAN presents shared pools of storage devices to multiple servers.
What are SAN ports?
A storage area network (SAN) switch is a device that connects servers and shared pools of storage devices and is dedicated to moving storage traffic.
How does a SAN work?
A storage area network (SAN) is a dedicated, independent high-speed network that interconnects and delivers shared pools of storage devices to multiple servers. Each server can access shared storage as if it were a drive directly attached to the server. Each switch and storage system on the SAN must be interconnected.
What is the purpose of a SAN?
A SAN (storage area network) is a network of storage devices that can be accessed by multiple servers or computers, providing a shared pool of storage space. Each computer on the network can access storage on the SAN as though they were local disks connected directly to the computer.
What is the difference between a SAN and NAS?
NAS is a single storage device that serves files over Ethernet and is relatively inexpensive and easy to set up, while a SAN is a tightly coupled network of multiple devices that is more expensive and complex to set up and manage.
What is SAN and how it works?
What SAN used for?
SANs are primarily used to access data storage devices, such as disk arrays and tape libraries from servers so that the devices appear to the operating system as direct-attached storage. A SAN typically is a dedicated network of storage devices not accessible through the local area network (LAN).
How is SAN different from LAN?
LAN is a group of computers and peripheral devices that share a common communications line or wireless link to a server within a distinct geographic area. SAN is a dedicated high-speed network or subnetwork that interconnects and presents shared pools of storage devices to multiple servers.
How are storage devices attached to the SAN fabric?
In either case, the storage is physically decoupled from the hosts. The storage devices and the hosts now become peers attached to a common SAN fabric that provides high bandwidth, longer reach distance, the ability to share resources, enhanced availability, and other benefits of consolidated storage.
What are the basic concepts of a SAN switch?
SAN Switch basic concepts – SAN environment provides block-oriented I/O between the computer systems and the target disk systems. The SAN may use Fiber Channel or Ethernet (iSCSI) to provide connectivity between hosts and storage.
What are the fabrics in a Fibre Channel network?
In Fibre Channel networks, we have two fabrics, Fabric A and Fabric B. End hosts (including the storage system) are connected to both fabrics, but the switches are not. Switches are dedicated to either Fabric A or Fabric B. In the example below, Server 1 has two HBA ports for redundancy.
What are the storage components of a San?
The storage components of a SAN are the storage arrays. Storage arrays include storage processors (SPs). The SPs are the front end of the storage array. SPs communicate with the disk array (which includes all the disks in the storage array) and provide the RAID/LUN functionality.