William Edwards Demming, the father of modern quality management, said that ‘In God we trust; all others must bring data’. Data has proven to be an essential commodity that has effectively fuelled digital growth. Clive Humby’s iconic declaration of ‘data is the new oil’ is the oft-quoted phrase to establish the relevance of data as a precious resource in today’s digital age. And, every valuable commodity needs to be stored and secured effectively. This has given rise to advanced data storage solutions like network storage. The premium data storage and management solutions allow businesses to streamline critical processes, from customer onboarding to sales optimization, making them the most critical aspects of any business.
The commonly available network storage options are:
- Storage Area Network (SAN)
- Network-Attached Storage (NAS)
- Direct-Attached Storage (DAS)
Each one of the above types has its own set of pros and cons. However, Storage Area Network, with its benefits and lower cost of implementation is becoming the network storage of choice for all types of organizations – from MNCs to SMEs. A recent study shows that about 44% of small companies are either researching, piloting, or implementing the Storage Area Networks for the first time.
What Is SAN?
Storage Area Network is high-speed and secure dedicated network storage that provides access to a subnetwork of shared storage devices. It interconnects the shared pool of storage devices and makes them accessible to multiple servers. Each server can access the shared storage pool as if it were directly connected to the server. The SAN architecture is designed in such a way that it makes all storage devices available to all servers on a LAN or WAN.
The Storage Area Network connects all the pooled resources via SAN switches. SAN is assembled using cabling, host bus adapters, and switches. SAN is usually deployed using a Fibre Channel (FC) technology that uses Fibre Channel Protocol (FCP) along with Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE).
The latter makes it possible to direct FC traffic over high-speed Ethernet infrastructures. The Fibre Channel SANs are considered expensive and are usually used by big corporations.
Alternatively, Internet Small Computing System Interface (iSCSI) is used by SMEs as it reduces the complexity of FC SANs by encapsulating the SCSI commands into IP packets. So, instead of managing two networks, companies can use existing infrastructure for both LAN & SAN with iSCSI. This option is ideal for organizations who may not have the required technical expertise and funds to support Fibre Channel SAN.
How Does SAN Work?
The working of a Storage Area Network is a complex process, but one which delivers a wide array of benefits. Before we look at the benefits of SAN, let us see how it functions:
1. A block-based access request for the storage device is sent out as soon as the host tries accessing the storage device on SAN.
2. The SCSI commands are encapsulated in the FC packets. The HBA converts the request into the optical form necessary for transmission on the fibre optic.
3. The HBA transmits the FC request to the Storage Area Network.
4. One of the SAN switches will receive the request and send it to the storage processor which is then sent to the storage device.
Advantages Of SAN
SAN offers multiple benefits that help an organization improve on several fronts. Here are some of the top benefits of SAN.
- Better Disk Utilization
Using Storage Area Networks enables you to have better disk utilization. This is achieved as storage availability in a centralized manner enables the IT administrator to control everything as a single entity. This ensures that more resources can be allocated to the servers that need it the most by slicing up the central pool of storage at the network level. In the absence of SAN, the same results would have to be achieved by adding extra disks and increasing the server space. Besides being expensive, this also leads to a wastage of storage resources.
- Disaster Recovery
With multiple aspects of the organization relying on data and other online applications, it becomes crucial to safeguard this data while ensuring smooth operations. When disaster strikes, the capability of the IT department to get things back up and running could determine the fate of the organization. A SAN-based disaster recovery system can ensure faster recovery as an application that requires higher availability will be served first. The data consistency is maintained by data-protection algorithms that are set to peak within the storage array of the Storage Area Network.
- Quick, Efficient, and Centralized Backup
Using SAN ensures that data transfer and access is never hampered. If one server gets disconnected, the other server automatically stabilizes the data load. It also simplifies administration and adds more flexibility. This is achieved, primarily, because there are no single cables and storage devices that have to be moved physically. SAN also improves overall storage utilization and effectiveness.
It is essential for organizations to back up the huge chunks of data that it generates on a daily basis. A slow data backup solution may not be suitable, but SAN can solve this problem. The storage area network is capable of duplicating data copies quickly. This ensures that the IT administrator can back up all the data at frequent intervals. This becomes an asset, especially for your website and applications. If your web hosting provider uses SAN storage for the site data, doing daily or weekly backups are a breeze. Good Linux Virtual Private Server Hosting (VPS) providers use SAN storage for storing sensitive website data.
- Additional Benefits
- SAN improves application availability which can be otherwise hampered due to data corruption and disk failure.
- SAN ensures complete data security as it is nearly impossible to steal data from the Storage Area Network by unauthorized users.
- Since SAN uses high-speed optic fibres, the speed of data transfer and retrieval is also very high, even exceeding 5 Gbps.
- SAN also addresses the bandwidth bottlenecks experienced in the LAN-based server storage.
Given the options available in the market, using SAN should be a straightforward process for your data storage. You need to determine the needs of your organization, compare the options, and select the storage network that suits your requirements.
Do let us know your personal experience with SAN or other storage networks in the comments section below.
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