A SAN is also known as a storage area network. A SAN is a group of storage devices that large companies use to execute their program applications and tasks. There are different standard networks available you can choose according to your priorities.
- SAN (Storage Area Network)
- Network-Attached Storage (NAS)
- Direct-Attached Storage (DAS)
There are many advantages of using a SAN network i.e., speed, scalability, and many more. While there are a few disadvantages Cost and complexity are big concerns for small businesses or organizations. Nowadays SAN is getting increasingly popular day by day but they aren’t necessarily the right choice for every organization.
In this blog, we will discuss what is storage area network, the benefits of SAN, and some reasons why SAN is helpful for companies and organizations.
Let’s continue with What is Storage Area Network?
What is Storage Area Network?
The storage area network provides access to a sub-network of shared storage devices in an extremely fast and secure manner. By interconnecting the storage devices, it makes them accessible to multiple servers. As if the shared storage pool were directly connected to each server, each server can access it. All storage devices on a LAN or WAN are accessible through the SAN architecture.
A SAN, on the other hand, is constructed using cables, switches, and host bus adapters. In general, Storage Area Networks are deployed using Fibre Channel (FC) technology. This technology uses Fibre Channel Protocol (FCP) and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE). High-speed Ethernet infrastructures then handle FC traffic. Also, the Fibre Channel SANs are relatively expensive, so big corporations employ them.
Benefits of SAN (Storage Area Network)
Storage area network offers you multiple benefits that help your organization or business to improve on several fronts. By using SAN, you can seamlessly migrate workloads between servers and perform maintenance without interrupting underlying systems. A SAN enables workloads of different sizes to sit on the same shared storage but use different computing resources.
- Increased disk utilization: Improved disk utilization is the greatest advantage of a SAN. A greater utilization reduces the number of disks and drives needed, reducing the overall cost of storage devices and systems.
- Less Backup Time: As a data backup solution, SANs offer the unique capability of duplicating data almost instantly. A SAN is an ideal solution whenever a company needs to perform extensive backups.
- Disaster Recovery: The organization relies heavily on data and other online applications, so it is crucial to safeguard this data while ensuring smooth operations. By duplicating data with SAN, an organization can recover more quickly.
- Redundancy: Data is also protected by local redundancy via SAN, similar to the disaster recovery advantage discussed above. From the perspective of the servers attached to the SAN, a redundant array of disks is viewed as a local volume. This allows you to have high availability with fast disk input/output performance when compared to a Network Area Storage (NAS).
- High-Speed Disk Technologies: SAN provides data retrieval at speeds surpassing high Gbps.
9 Reasons Why SAN is Helpful for Companies
A SAN helps IT companies and business organizations to manage their data efficiently. The data is stored on their storage systems 24×7 and can be accessed by anyone working within the business.
Adapt to hardware failures
It provides data to everyone in the company and can withstand hardware failures. Servers can be managed efficiently through the Storage Area Network (SAN).
Costly and has a complex Installation Process
A high price is associated with it, and installation involves a complex process that requires labor. As well as being more complex than Network Attached Storage, it also provides great storage and data management capabilities.
Effective Data Management
It is composed of networking switches, software, and devices that are tailored to the specific business environment. Improved data management is enabled by an advanced set of features, and the spot-on technology used in SAN. The servers in the SAN manage the file management system.
Can manage various Servers
Numerous Servers can be attached to a SAN. It is not possible to set such a limit. It’ll work well for a virtualization technique. The SAN’s capacity is over 1012 Bytes, too.
Uniformly distributes the Storage Facility
It may distribute storage facilities across the organization in a uniform manner. Also, it reconnects the Storage Devices that lead to a centralized Administration and reduces the cost of Ownership.
Provides Data for Security
It’s offering the highest level of data security. To allow authenticated users to join the network, you can use a list of access controls in switches.
Provides a Fixed Place of Storage
A Storage Area Network (SAN) has all the Servers interconnected through Switches. It does not involve switching equipment to another location. According to the needs of the company, more storage devices may also be added to the SAN.
Manage Storage Disasters
Many locations can be linked with storage systems through the SAN. And it ensures that if local storage devices destroy the data, it will be protected. Data may be safely moved to the central location through a SAN. It replicates data and offers a useful way of recovering from disasters.
Provides high-speed data retrieval process
At a very high speed that exceeds 5G, the SAN network can help retrieve data. It is, in essence, one of the quickest data transfer technologies to date.
Conclusion
In this article, we have discussed what is SAN (storage area network), what are the benefits of SAN and the last one is why SAN is important for a business or a company. As we all know that storage is a very important part of every business or organization. Storage area network serves as a convenient process when it comes to data storage. To store any data our priority is to store data in a particular space for security.
Before storing the data first you need to analyze and determine the requirements of the business.
I hope this article will help you and clear all your doubts.
Also, read: https://www.trunknotes.com/in-what-ways-does-cloud-hosting-india-contribute-to-business-growth/2161/
