Applications | Experts | Maps | Network Mgmt | OS | Packets | Problem Mgmt | Philosophy | SAN

SAN SAN History & Plumbing SAN Background SAN Protocol Stacks Storage Plumbing from a High Level DAS & NAS Architecture SAN Flavors

Storage Area Networks I've just started digging into SCSI transport in specific and Storage Area Networks in general. I've produced a SAN History & Plumbing seminar in-house, an extract from the larger text, where I describe my understanding of SANs to-date. Most of this material is derived from what I learned from seminars given by Howard Goldstein and Jacob Farmer. The Driver for Storage Management Storage Management exists because customers want more tools to manage space, to better utilize this asset. The Key to Storage Management Success Virtualization, aka indirection. When one host is attached to one disk, our choices are limited. But once we abstract the connection between host and disk, all sorts of capabilities arise: Transparent growth and shrinkage of space Transparent improvement in performance Transparent reduction in MTBF Transparent increase in number of clients This is where storage area management technologies spend their energy and their complexity: implementing one (or more!) layers of indirection between the application and the disk. This indirection can be implemented in the disk, in the host, in the network out-of-band, in the network-in-band ... there are many ways to do this. Diagrams SAN Protocol Stacks Storage Plumbing from a High Level DAS & NAS Architecture SAN Flavors Educational Links Troubleshooting Storage Networking Free Software I/O Meter I/O Zone SCSI Tools Xyratex Disk Basher Windows Debug Utilities SysInternals