STORAGE AREA NETWORK (SAN)

SAN Storage Area Networks (SANs) provide unprecedented levels of enterprise availability and flexibility in storage management and configuration. SANs are revolutionising information storage and management in the same way Local Area Networks (LANs) transformed data exchange. The volume of data storage has increased dramatically while the cost of purchasing storage hardware continues to decline. SANs enable disk storage capacity to be consolidated into a centrally managed high performance device and share resources with many servers across the corporate enterprise. Storage can be dynamically allocated to any server on demand and extra capacity may be added to the shared resource in a non-disruptive manner.

SANs typically comprise of one or more fabrics of Fibre Channel switches, storage devices, SAN appliances for storage management and virtualisation and the servers they support. A key feature of SAN topology is that it offers any-to-any connectivity allowing storage to be presented to any server within the SAN fabric as opposed to one-to-one in Directly Attached Storage (DAS) environments. Redundancy can be built into the SAN architecture by eliminating no single point of failure through Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks (RAID) controllers, dual fabrics and interconnects and dual Host Bus Adaptors (HBAs). SAN topology also supports heterogeneous operating systems platforms like UNIX, Windows and Linux with consolidated storage devices.

The HP StorageWorks SAN family offers a wide portfolio of entry-level, mid-range and enterprise class storage:

Entry-level SAN - Ideal for small to medium deployments and scalable to terabytes of capacity. HP Modular Smart Array 1000 (MSA1000), MSA500 and MSA30 are ideal entry points to SAN implementation.

Mid-range SAN - Targeted towards medium to large size data centres offering multiple terabytes of capacity and high performance. The HP Enterprise Virtual Array 3000 (EVA3000) is a high performance, high availability “virtual” RAID storage solution that meets application specific demand for sustained high I/O throughput, seamless capacity expansion, instantaneous replication and simplified administration.

Enterprise class SAN - HP's flagship virtual disk array for enterprise-wide deployment and mission-critical applications. HP Enterprise Virtual Array 5000 (EVA5000) offers maximum scalability, industry-leading performance, a fully integrated suite of centralised management tools, and unmatched data protection and disaster tolerant features.