Final Thoughts

In nearly all cases, people who operate servers don't usually install or maintain a SAN. The skill sets for the two tasks are very different. You are likely to need to call in a storage professional or an outside consulting firm to install a SAN. You may, however, need to connect a system or component to an existing SAN, which requires that you have some familiarity with Fibre Channel connection types and a basic understanding of device addressing and how to troubleshoot addressing problems.

Storage management on SANs is a big topic, and because it is storage-centric, we don't describe it fully here. However, as SANs become more widely adopted, and particularly as the components get cheaper, you may find that you are called upon to manage a SAN using specialized software. SAN management software offers autodiscovery technology, topology mapping, device properties drilldown, path analysis, and visualization that makes the job of managing a SAN easier. Some of these software packages are really software suites, bundling in volume managers, backup software, and other capabilities. You'll also find that the major network frameworks, such as Hewlett-Packard's OpenView, IBM's Tivoli, and CA's Unicenter TNG, all offer storage networking, backup, and other applications for managing SANs. Thus if you find yourself involved in working with SANs, you should investigate the capabilities of software in this area.