sans ??
- Thread starter on31ll
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I'm not sure about the particulars, but itidiots.com does some great videos/tutorials - they recently did some SAN ones - give them a try.
Soldato
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That's the key part of what a SAN is.wiki said:
What they 'do' is often a lot broader in reality.
Is this just out of curiosity, or do you actually need to know? Are you familiar with stuff like RAID?
The wiki article explains it as clearly as anyone here could
A SAN isn't a disk array or any one component, in the same sense that a LAN isn't a computer or a network switch. Its a type of network, a storage network. With disk arrays, switches and controller cards
The wiki article explains it as clearly as anyone here could
A SAN isn't a disk array or any one component, in the same sense that a LAN isn't a computer or a network switch. Its a type of network, a storage network. With disk arrays, switches and controller cards
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Mate, get yourself a cheap system that you can run VMware ESXI or XenServer 5.6 on, then download and play around with the following:
Open vSwitch and/or Vyatta (to build an "internal" storage area network)
OpenFiler (NAS // SAN - to provide the storage so you can see how it works)
Linux system (Ubuntu, Fedora or CentOS, to mount the storage from OpenFiler)
Lots of potential to learn a lot right there
Cost: 1xHalf decent OcUK system with AMD-V or Intel-VT and reasonable amount of disk space // memory
Open vSwitch and/or Vyatta (to build an "internal" storage area network)
OpenFiler (NAS // SAN - to provide the storage so you can see how it works)
Linux system (Ubuntu, Fedora or CentOS, to mount the storage from OpenFiler)
Lots of potential to learn a lot right there
Cost: 1xHalf decent OcUK system with AMD-V or Intel-VT and reasonable amount of disk space // memory
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when i started getting into storage i found it easiest to start by contrasting SAN vs NAS to get a feel for the differences.
basically NAS presented storage will appear to a computer as a network share on the "data" network (regular LAN etc..) which is physically located on a remote computer, whilst SAN presented storage will appear to a computer as a disk drive to be mounted just like a hard disk that sits internal to the local computer. you can imagine SAN attached storage like its actually just like a regular internal hard disk but rather than sitting inside the computer case connected to the mobo by a short sata cable, its sitting in another rack connected to the mobo by a potentially long stretch of fibre channel/ethernet/etc... cable.
The second distinction to make is between the disk drives themselves and the network that attaches them to the computer.
you can have different types of storage network (fibre channel or ethernet are the most common), but the end goal is that they provide connectivity between the computer and some external set of disk drives. The disk drives will commonly take the form of a disk array which is basically just a load of drives which are grouped together in various fashions to make larger amounts of contiguous storage space. a disk controller will usually (although not in all cases) sit in front of the drives and provide some intelligence to do things like carving up sections of the contigious disk space which can then be individually presented to various computers connected to the storage network. and as we said before, those sections of disk space will be seen by the computers as individual disk drives attached to the local computer.
in terms of reading up on this stuff, there was a free "SANs for dummies" e-book knocking around on the net a while ago. might be worth a google to see if its still available.
hope that helps
basically NAS presented storage will appear to a computer as a network share on the "data" network (regular LAN etc..) which is physically located on a remote computer, whilst SAN presented storage will appear to a computer as a disk drive to be mounted just like a hard disk that sits internal to the local computer. you can imagine SAN attached storage like its actually just like a regular internal hard disk but rather than sitting inside the computer case connected to the mobo by a short sata cable, its sitting in another rack connected to the mobo by a potentially long stretch of fibre channel/ethernet/etc... cable.
The second distinction to make is between the disk drives themselves and the network that attaches them to the computer.
you can have different types of storage network (fibre channel or ethernet are the most common), but the end goal is that they provide connectivity between the computer and some external set of disk drives. The disk drives will commonly take the form of a disk array which is basically just a load of drives which are grouped together in various fashions to make larger amounts of contiguous storage space. a disk controller will usually (although not in all cases) sit in front of the drives and provide some intelligence to do things like carving up sections of the contigious disk space which can then be individually presented to various computers connected to the storage network. and as we said before, those sections of disk space will be seen by the computers as individual disk drives attached to the local computer.
in terms of reading up on this stuff, there was a free "SANs for dummies" e-book knocking around on the net a while ago. might be worth a google to see if its still available.
hope that helps