By IT Brew Staff
less than 3 min read
Definition:
A storage area network (SAN) is a dedicated, high-speed network that enables organizations to move data between storage and servers. No matter where the storage is located on the network, storage devices will appear as locally attached drives to users. SAN allows data to be transferred from storage to servers, from server to server, and from storage device to storage device.
Years ago, the storage capacity of a network was limited by the number of storage devices you could connect with each server. A SAN gets rid of this bottleneck by allowing multiple servers to access common storage, using virtualization and devices such as SAN switches and directors. Instead of having 100 servers connected to their own storage drives, a large organization could utilize SAN to have those 100 servers feed off a massive, scalable storage “pool.”
Because SANs have their own infrastructure, data can be moved from storage to servers without impacting the speed and reliability of the local area network (LAN). SANs can also boost application performance by optimizing storage processing on the network, and data is available via multiple pathways, boosting availability. SANs are also critical to disaster recovery, as a copy of vital data can be kept in a remote facility while remaining accessible via the network.
For IT pros, these benefits come at a cost. SANs can become expensive and complex to set up, and a poorly constructed SAN can still result in performance issues; for instance, if an IT team hasn’t anticipated the right volume of data requests at peak times, the network could crawl to a virtual standstill.
