Storage Area Networks

Justification for storage area networks

Several factors have led to the increased demand for data storage, one of them is the dramatic decrease in the actual cost of data storage.

What has happened is that. as the cost of storage has decreased. The demand for storage has increased dramatically. Businesses are now generating and analyzing huge amounts of data in an effort to create competitive advantages, leading to more demand for storage capacity. Another factor is that the demand for the data to be available from anywhere and accessible from any device has also increased.

A storage area network (SAN) can be a solution to the need for both storage capacity and high availability.

• Advantages of the SAN

  1. Scalability: the amount of data that is being generated is huge, which has led to a need to store that data. The SAN is more scalable than other options.

     • As storage needs increase, the capacity of the SAN can be easily increased to meet them.

  2. Data availability: demand has increased for data to be available at any time from anywhere. A SAN can play a vital role in creating that accessibility.

     • SANs are often deployed as part of a cloud computing solution, thus increasing that availability

  3. Optimization: as the requirements to store data are removed from application servers, those servers can then be optimized to run those applications more efficiently.

     • At the same time, data storage is also optimized.

SAN Technology

The storage area network (SAN) and network attached storage (NAS) often get confused with one another.

The SAN Is an actual network of devices that have the sole purpose of storing data efficiently The NAS Is a specifically designed network appliance that has been configured to store data more efficiently than standard storage methods. The difference is that a NAS is a data storage appliance that is placed on a network, while a SAN is a network of data storage devices. it is not uncommon for a SAN to contain multiple NAS devices.

• Fiber channel (FC)

  1. A high speed network technology originally developed to operate over fiber optic cables only.

     • The standards have been modified to allow the use of copper cabling in conjunction with the fiber.

  2. Commonly used to connect SANs.

     • Uses Fibre Channel Protocol (FCP) as its transport protocol to transmit SCSI (Small Computer System Interface) commands to storage devices (eg , NAS appliances).

• Internet SCSI (iSCSI)

  1. An IP based networking standard used to connect data storage facilities and SANs.

     • Allows SCSI commands and processes to take place over long distances.

• Jumbo frames

  1. Allows for greater throughput of data by allowing up to 9000 bytes of data in a single frame.

     • Can greatly increase the efficiency of the SAN.

Cloud Concepts

Cloud classifications

Cloud computing is where the resources on the network are not actually physical in nature. They are provided to the user virtually.

This can lead to a very fluid and dynamic environment as required resources are normally only provisioned as needed and are decommissioned once their use is done. Most often, these virtual resources are not owned by the company that uses them, but are provided by a service provider. While cloud computing is highly configurable and changeable, it does have some basic structures that are used in the classification of the type of cloud that is in use.

• Public cloud

  1. Systems can interact with services and devices within the public cloud and on public networks (e.g., the Internet) and possibly other public clouds.

• Private cloud

  1. Systems only communicate with services and devices within the specified private cloud.

• Community cloud

  1. Cloud services used by private individuals, organizations, or groups that have a common interest.

Cloud Computing Types

Because of the nature of cloud computing, it is very configurable to the needs and desires of the purchaser.

Purchasers have many options beyond the type of cloud services (e g , public or private) that they want to provision. They must also determine what type of service they are going to require—from the most basic to the highly complex (e.g., SaaS or PaaS).

• Software as a service (SaaS)

  1. The end user purchases the rights to use an application (software) without the need to configure the virtual servers that will deliver the application.

     • It is usually delivered as a Web application (opened and used from within a Web browser).

• Platform as a service (PaaS)

  1. The user is provided with a development platform for the creation of software packages, without the need to configure the virtual servers and infrastructure that delivers it.

• Infrastructure as a service (laaS)

  1. The end user is provided with access to virtual servers (configurable by the customer) and other virtual network resources.

     • Creates a highly configurable environment in which customers can create the resources and performance that they require.

     • The end user supplies the software that is going to be used on the laaS network.

It is not uncommon for the type of cloud computing being utilized by an organization to be a mix.

Some departments may use laaS. While a development team utilizes a PaaS only part of the advantage of cloud computing is only initializing resources as they are needed.

In a private cloud situation, it is possible for the organization that is using it to actually own the cloud resources. If they do own the cloud resources, they may have it on site, or they may pay to have the resources hosted off site.

This concludes my Networking deep dive series!!! I hope everyone enjoyed the learning process and now is equipped to deal with all the networking related tasks that they will encounter in their career ahead.

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