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Jim Beam
Posting Yak Master
137 Posts |
 Posted - 2011-01-05 : 12:37:05
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| Hi all,Firstly, am I right in thinking that a SAN is, as the acronym implies, simply an array of disks, but on a different network?Secondly, in the same we we'd want lots of spindles in a RAID, what considerations would we need to take when choosing a SAN (apart from vendors being a bunch of crooks!) ??Cheers,Jim. |
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Kristen
Test
22859 Posts |
Posted - 2011-01-05 : 12:43:50
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| here's my understanding:SAN is a bunch of disk (can contain a set of RAID5 and another set of RAID10, or whatever).It is linked to a server by a high speed network card, so in effect the server "writes" to its disks across a dedicated network. I suppose that isn't much different to using a Disk Controller.Two machines can share the same disks within a SAN. So Server-1 and Server-2 could share LogicalDrive-A and LogicalDrive-B. if Server-1 failed then Server-2 could be activated, and it would have the latest-copy of all data on the disk.That's what we use it for anyway, a hot failover server for when Server-1 breaks. |
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russell
Pyro-ma-ni-yak
5072 Posts |
Posted - 2011-01-05 : 12:45:24
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| SAN = Storage Area Network.Lives on the same network as the servers you attach to it.There are many reasons to use SAN storage including:- high performance- large data footprint- ease of management- dynamic space allocation- thin provisioning- deduplication technologiessome SANs come with tools for- change capture- instant creation of mirrors- block level SAN to SAN sysnchronization |
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Advantages of SAN over local disk