4.6 Conclusion

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Companies faced with a continuous bombardment of information are turning to SANs to house, manage, and protect this vital asset. While NAS is intended for data access at the file level, SANs are optimized for high-volume block-oriented data transfers. Although both solutions address the need to remove direct storage-to-server connections to facilitate more flexible storage access, SANs provide a higher-performance and more scalable storage environment. They achieve this by enabling many direct connections between servers and storage devices—such as disk storage systems and tape libraries—over a variety of transports. The choice between Fibre Channel, Gigabit Ethernet, IP, or ATM will hinge on such factors as the distance between storage locations, the presence of other types of traffic, and the organization’s budget constraints.

But different physical storage types on the network can create a significant management dilemma. A single logical view of storage using virtualization techniques can streamline data access and management. Within an organization, storage devices or resources of different types can be located either in different locations or be centrally located within a controlled environment. This kind of media blending, or virtualization, can facilitate a more efficient storage network and provide a scalable solution that is more cost-efficient to manage.

When hiring new IT people to administer the SAN, it is recommended that the job description include and that preference be given to individuals who have taken SNIA’s Storage Networking Certification Program (SNCP). This is the storage industry’s leading vendor-independent certification program for storage networking, which was developed to establish standards and expectations for measuring the storage networking expertise of IT professionals. The program allows IT professionals to demonstrate their storage networking skill level to current and future employers by equipping them with the expertise required to successfully complete the SNIA certification process and exams.



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LANs to WANs(c) The Complete Management Guide
LANs to WANs: The Complete Management Guide
ISBN: 1580535720
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 184

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