What is Storage Area Network? Examples / Features (SAN)

Storage Area Network is dedicated for high speed network that are interconnect with each other for share the data between the different serer of the system. It is highly used in the distributed systems.

A SAN moves storage resources off the common user network and reorganizes them into an independent, high-performance network. This allows each server to access shared storage as if it were a drive directly attached to the server. When a host wants to access a storage device on the SAN, it sends out a block-based access request for the storage device.

Real Time Example:

Storage Area Network is use for building the concept of the big data. So Big Data is the example of Storage Area Network.

Storage Management in SAN:

SAN develop on the three different principle components:

• Cabling
• Host bus Adaptor
• Switches

Each Switch and the storage system should interconnect with each other and physical interaction should support bandwidth levels for manipulation of data. The data is managed through encapsulating commands into IP packets for manipulation of data on internet ports.

It is used in both LAN and WAN and the packets of data is transmitted by Fibre optical cables.

Features of Storage Area Network:

Following are the features of SAN:

• The main benefit to using a SAN is that raw storage is treated as a pool of resources that can be centrally managed and allocated on an as-needed basis.
• SANs are also highly scalable because additional capacity can be added as required.
• SAN is Highly available data network because it is based on the distributed system.
• In the security point of view the Storage Area Network has good security system because it used encapsulation for the  security of the data and also there structure is very complex which can not be detected by the attackers or hackers.

Disadvantages of SAN:

Following are the disadvantages of Storage Area Network:

• The implementation of the SAN system is vary costly because it used fibre optic cables for the transmission of data packets.
• SAN system is also difficult to implement because it is highly complex to build or manage the data on SAN system.