Storage Area Networks (SANs)

area networks (SANs); SAN applications

A SAN (storage area network) is a networked high-speed

infrastructure (subnetwork) that establishes direct access by servers
to an interconnected group of heterogeneous storage devices such as
optical disks, RAID arrays, and tape backups, which are effective
for storing large amounts of information and backing up data online
in e-commerce, online transaction processing, electronic vaulting,
data warehousing, data mining, multimedia Internet/intranet
browsing, and enterprise database managing applications. SANs
provide additional capabilities (fault tolerance, remote management,
clustering, and topological flexibility) to mission-critical, data-
intensive applications. A SAN is typically a part of an enterprise
network of computing resources [Sachdev & Arunkundram, 2002].
A simple model of the storage area network as a networked high-
speed infrastructure is shown in Figure 1. [Figure 1]
A SAN can be considered as an extended and shared storage bus
within a data center, consisting of various storage devices and
specific interfaces (e.g., fibre channel, ESCON, HIPPI, SCSI, or
SSA) rather than the Ethernet [Peterson, 1998]. In order to be
connected to the enterprise network, the SAN utilizes technologies
similar to those of LANs and WANs: switches, routers, gateways,
and hubs (see Figure 1). Wide area network carrier technologies,
such as asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) or synchronous optical
networks can be used for remote archival data storing and backup.
As an important element of modern distributed networking
architectures of storage-centric enterprise information processing,
SAN technology represents a significant step toward a fully
networked secure data storage infrastructure that is radically
different from traditional server-attached storage [Clark, 1999]. In
addition, SANs provide improved options for network storages,
such as a creation of remote

Van Nostrand’s Scientific Encyclopedia, Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
or local, dedicated or shared data storage networks with access
capability faster than network attached storage (NAS).

1
SANs are based on the storage-centric information-processing
paradigm, which enables any-to-any connectivity of computers
(servers) and storage devices over a high-speed enterprise network
of interconnected fiber channel switches that form the SAN fabric.
The incidence of unconnected clusters of information is eliminated
or significantly reduced by SANs. According to this concept, a SAN
resides behind the server and provides any users or devices on the
enterprise network (“clients”) with fast access to an array of data
storage devices. It can be viewed as multihost connected-and-shared
enterprise storage. Adding new storage devices and server elements
resolves traditional network-bottlenecks and small-scale problems
of interfaces, such as the small computer systems interface (SCSI)
and network attached storage (NAS), and can easily expand the
scale of the SAN [Thornburgh & Schoenborn, 2001]. Another
advantage of SAN technology is that backups can be made over the
SAN fibre channel subnet, and, in this case, backup traffic is totally
removed from the enterprise network.
The SAN represents a new segment of the information services
industry called storage solution providers (SSP). However, isolated
SANs cannot realize SSPs’ services, such as real-time data
replication, failover, storage hosting, and remote vaulting.

0.1 Benefits of SANs

A SAN makes physical storage capacity a single, scalable resource
and allows the flexible allocation of virtualized storage volumes
(e.g., RAIDs, JBODs, and EMC, SUN, and DELL storage devices).
The SAN can manage backup tasks that were a huge administrative
and computer-resource burden under old storage architectures. The
storage management cost savings can be higher than 80%. A
costeffective, scalable SAN enhances overall system performance. It
can integrate legacy SCSI devices, which allows increasing their
systemwide effective usable capacity by up to 30%. See also
InfraStor Technology Corp.:
http://www.infrastor.com/solutions/index.htm.
SANs are an integral part of a large financial services enterprise,
ISP, government organization, research laboratory, electronic
publisher, digital video production group, TV-broadcasting station
moving to digital services, or educational institution, or any
organization with increasing data storage needs.
2
There are several key reasons for implementing a SAN. The first
three concern business issues of return on the investment in data
storage, as well as the protection of existing investments:
· · ·
SANs are cost-effective (reduced cost of storage management,
including backup and recovery; increased user productivity; cost-
effective implementations of high availability disaster protection,

using remote clusters and remote mirrored arrays); SANs reduce

business risk (faster disaster recovery; reduced revenue loss from

down-time; reduced lost-opportunity costs); Legacy investments

are protected (SANs can be implemented without abandoning
existing storage infrastructures such as devices using SCSI
connections).

· four address critical technical issues that face data-center

The next
managers at a time when the volume of data to be managed and
made available in many organizations is increasing at a 60% annual

rate: SANs provide scalability (add servers and storage

independently);
·
SANs allow flexibility (reconfigure storage and servers
dynamically without interrupting their services; load sharing and
redistribution);
·
SANs enhance overall system performance (more effective use
of existing server compute cycles; real-time backup without
impacting LAN/WAN; multiple server-to-storage paths;
networked storage arrays that can outperform bus-attached
storage; compatibility with parallelized database applications);
·
SANs are an integral part of any high-availability plan
(facilitation of shared on-line spares and remote backup or
mirroring; reduced down-time requirements; storage
independent of the application and accessible through alternate
data paths such as found in clustered systems).

The implementation of a SAN can realize significant overall cost

savings in data-center operations and can increase user productivity.
3
The opportunity to avoid escalating costs depends on·
decentralization of data and applications. A key element in the
consolidation of data storage must include the implementation of a

basic SAN infrastructure in order to provide the following:

Bandwidth to service clients;
·
Maintenance of data availability without impacting LAN
bandwidth;
·
Scalability for long term, rapid growth with protection of legacy
investments;
·
Flexibility to provide optimum balance of server and storage
capacity;
· ·
Manageability for ease of installation and maintainability;
Shared access to data resources for real-time backup and
recovery.

Distributed environments require high-cost maintenance in terms of

staff resources. The consolidation of distributed NT-based storages
to a virtualized SAN-based resource can save 80% or more of the
costs of management. See also InfraStor Technologies Corp.:
http://www.infrastor.com/.

0.2 SAN Applications

SAN applications cover the following areas of data transfer
[Peterson, 1998]: (1) the externalization of data storage out of the
server-SAN-attached-storage (SAS) and NAS-with-
SANinterconnects network architectures; (2) clustering, a redundant
process that provides failover, high availability, performance, and
scalability through the use of multiple servers as a data pipe and
allows data storage resources to be shared; (3) data protection
solutions for backup, remote clustering, file mirroring, and
replicating and journaling file systems by creating data storage
redundancy on a dynamic basis; (4) data vaulting, which is the
process of transferring archived data to less expensive media; (5)
data interchange from one storage system to another or between
different environments; and (6) disaster recovery, which is similar to
data interchange, moving copies of data offsite, and is built on
4
remote vaulting (backup) processes or on remote array mirroring or
clustering. Several new applications benefit from 2 Gb/s fiber
channel SANs; multimedia audio/video servers that provide the
ability to stream higher resolution files, medical imaging, prepress
that speeds up design and file preparation, and video editing of
uncompressed HDTV data.
The first effective application of SANs has been serverless backup,
which provides enterprises with full-time information availability.
All backup-related tasks have been relegated to the SAN. Large
enterprises can store and manage huge amounts of information
(several terabytes or more) in the SAN high-performance
environment. Enterprise servers are connected to storage devices
(e.g., RAID arrays) via a high-speed interconnection, such as fiber
channel. The SAN any-to-any communication principle provides the
ability to share storage resources and alternative paths from server
to data storage device. A SAN is also able to share the resources
among several consolidated servers.
A cluster of interconnected servers may be connected to common
storage devices in the SAN environment and be accessible to all
clients. Modern enterprises employ this clustering technology to
resolve several challenging application problems [Barker &
Massiglia, 2001, p. 244], i.e., providing customers, partners, and
employees with continuous application service, even if the
enterprise systems fail, and supporting application performance
growth as demand grows, without service disruption to customers.
Clusters provide load balancing, high availability, and fault
tolerance and support application scaling. In some implementations,
the clustered servers can be managed from a single console.
Clustering methodology is effectively used in e-commerce, online
transaction processing, and other Web applications, which handle a
high volume of requests.
SAN methodology has its roots in two low-cost technologies:
SCSIbased storage and the NAS-based concept. They both
successfully implement storage-network links, but are limited to a
low volume of data flows and rates. SCSI still remains the most
popular “busattached” server–storage connection in SAN-attached
storage (SAS) systems, especially at the stage of transition from
SCSI bus devices to fiber–channel switches using the SCSI-fiber
protocol converter in a new enterprise storage (“data center”)
5
environment. In the network attached storage (NAS) system, storage
elements (i.e., a disk array) are attached directly to any type of
network via a LAN interface (e.g., Ethernet) and provide file access
services to computer systems. If the NAS elements are connected to
SANs, they can be considered as members of the SAN-attached
storage (SAS) system. The stored data may be accessed by a host
computer system using file access protocols such as NFS or CIFS.
SANs provide high-bandwidth block storage access over long
distance via extended fiber channel links. However, such links are
generally restricted to connections between data centers. NAS
access is less restricted by physical distance because
communications are via TCP/IP. See also Transmission Control
Protocol (TCP)/Internet Protocol (IP) Suite. NAS controls simple
access to files via a standard TCP/IP link. A SAN provides storage
access to client devices, but does not impose any inherent
restrictions on the operating system or file system that may be used.
For this reason, SANs are well suited to high-bandwidth storage
access by transactionprocessing and DBMS applications that
manage storage access by themselves. NAS, which has the inherent
ability to provide shared file-level access to multiple OS
environments, is well suited for such requirements as Web file
services, CAD file access by combined WinNT/2000, UNIX, and
LINUX devices, and wide-area streaming video distribution. A
balanced combination of these approaches will dominate in the
future.

0.3 SAN Architecture

The SANs architectures have been changed evolutionarily, adapting
to new application demands and expanding capacities. The original
fiber-channel-based SANs were simple loop configurations based
on the fiber channel arbitrated loop (FC-AP) standard.
Requirements of scalability and new functionality had transformed
SANs into fabricbased switching systems. Numerous vendors
offered different solutions of problems based on fabric switching.
As a result, immature standards created various interoperability
problems. Homogeneous high-cost SANs were developed. The
latest architectural approach is associated with a standards-based
“Open” 2Gb fabric switch that provides all the benefits of fabric
switching, but based on new industry standards (FC-SW-2) and
6
interoperability architecture that runs at twice the speed of legacy
fabric. The standards-based switches provide heterogeneous
capability. The latest feature reduces prices of the SAN’s
components and management costs of running a SAN.
Characteristics of three generations of SANs are summarized in
Table 1.
The Open 2Gb fibre channel allows doubled SAN speeds, enables
greater flexibility in configuring SANs for a wide range of
applications, and is especially useful for managing 1.5-Gb high-
definition video data. In the HDTV applications, a single fibre can
carry a full high-definition video stream without having to cache,
buffer, or compress the data. Other examples include storage service
providers that must deliver block data from to users at the highest
possible speeds and e-commerce companies that have to minimize
transaction times. The 2-Gb fiber channel provides the high-speed
backbone capability for fiber channel networks, which can be used
to interconnect two SAN switches. This configuration increase
overall data throughput across the SAN even if servers and disk
subsystems continue to operate via 1-Gb channels.
A SAN system consists of software and hardware components that
establish logical and physical paths between stored data and
applications that request them [Sheldon, 2001]. The data transforms,
which are located on the paths from storage device to application,
are the four main abstract components [Barker & Massiglia, 2001,
p. 128]: the disks (viewed through ESCON, FCP, HIPPI, SCSI, and
SSA interfaces as abstract entities), volumes (logical/virtual disk-
like storage entities that provide their clients with identified storage
blocks of persistent/retrieved data), file systems, and application-
independent database management systems. In a system with a
storage area network, five different combinations [Barker &
Massiglia, 2001] of these data transforms and corresponding
transformation paths serve different applications and system
architectures by various physical system elements. The disk
abstraction is actually the physical disk drive. The abstract volume
entity is realized as an external or embedded RAID controller, as an
out-of-band or in-band SAN appliance, or as a volume manager
serving a database or an application. Storage servers (such as NAS
devices), database servers, and application servers may contain the
abstract file systems. These devices and servers can be clustered to
increase scaling and application availability. In that case, their
7
volume file and management systems should be cluster-aware
[Barker & Massiglia, 2001].
Any SAN-based client–server system consists of three architectural
components: interfaces, interconnects or network infrastructure
components (switches, hubs, routers bridges, gateways,
multiplexors, extenders, and directors), and fabrics. The SAN
interfaces are fibre channel, ESCON, HIPPI, SCSI, and SSA. The
SAN interconnects link these storage interfaces together, making
various network configurations. Routers and bridges perform
protocol transformation in SANs. Switches increase the overall
SAN bandwidth by connecting system elements for data
transmission and allow advantages of the centralized storage
repositories with the shared applications and central management.
The most common SAN fabrics are switched fibre channel,
switched SCSI, and switched SSA, all of which physically link the
interconnects and determine the SAN’s performance and scalability.
Some fabrics embed operating systems that provide for SAN
security, monitoring, and management. Hosts are connected to the
fibre channel SAN through host bus adapters (HBAs), which consist
of hardware and interface drivers. Fiber channel HBAs support
negotiation with network-attached devices and switches and allow
the host to minimize its CPU overhead.

0.4 SAN Operating System Software Components

The SAN software plays an important role in providing an
environment for various business and management applications,
called system applications [Barker & Massiglia, 2001, p. 13], such
as clustering, data replication, and data copying. The management
applications (zoning, device discovery, allocation, RAID
subsystems, and others) manage the complex environment of
distributed systems. These applications can significantly reduce the
cost and improve the quality of enterprise information services.

Additional Reading

Barker, R., and P. Massiglia: Storage Networking Essentials: A

Complete Guide to Understanding & Implementing SANs, John
Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, NY, 2001.

8
 Clark, T.: Designing Storage Area Networks: A Practical
Reference for Implementing Fiber Channel SANs, Addison–
Wesley, Boston, MA, 1999.
Farley, M.: Storage Networking Fundamentals: An Introduction
to Storage Devices, Subsystems, Applications, Management, and
File Systems, Vol. 1, Cisco Press, Indianapolis, IN, 2004. Long,
J.: Storage Networking Protocol Fundamentals, Vol. 2, Pearson
Education, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2006.
Peterson, M.: Storage Area Networking, Strategic Research
Corp, Santa Barbara, CA, 1998.
Sachdev, P., and R. S. Arunkundram: Using storage area
networks, Special Edition, Que, Indianapolis, IN, 2002.
Sheldon, T.: McGraw–Hill Encyclopedia of Networking &
Telecommunications, The McGraw–Hill Companies, Inc., New
York, NY, 2001.
Spalding, R.: Storage Networks: The Complete Reference, The
McGraw-Hill Companies, New York, NY, 2003.
Thornburgh, R. H., and B. J. Schoenborn: Storage Area
Networks: Designing and Implementing a Mass Storage System,
Prentice-Hall, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2001. Toigo, J. W.:
The Holy Grail of Data Storage Management, Pearson
Education, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2003.
Troppens, U., W. Muller, and R. Erkens: Storage Networks
Explained: Basics and Application of Fibre Channel SAN, NAS,
ISCSI and InfiniBand, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, NY,
2004.
Vacca, J.: The Essential Guide to Storage Area Networks,
Prentice-Hall, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2002.

Web References

Emulex Corporation: http://www.emulex.com/

InfraStor Technologies Corp.: http://www.infrastor.com/
Figures

Figure 1.

9
Storage area network as a networked high-speed enterprise
infrastructure.
Table 1. Three Generations of SANs

Fabric Main Applications

Characteristics

First- 1Gb Loop FC-AL protocol; SCSI replacement

Generation 1Gb speed;

SANs enabled first SANs
Second- 1Gb FC-SW protocol; LAN-free backup;
Generation Proprietary; 1Gb speed; HA clustering

SANs Legacy proprietary switch-

Fabric
to-switch
connections;
expensive

Third- 2Gb Open Open FC-SW-2 Serverless

Generation Fabric protocol; backup;
SANs 2Gb speed; heterogeneous

standards-based storage

10
 switch-to-switch consolidation;

connections; high-definition

competition-driven video; data; price

reductions virtualization price
reductions
View publication stats

11