The Sikh Geek

I’ve just been reading the “SAN Primer for SMB” by Karl Palachuk, Harry Brelsford & Ryan Klein. The book sets out a case for considering SAN (storage area networking) for small and medium businesses. It also has a step by step guide in setting up and configuring the Qlogic SAN Express Kit. The book is very easy to understand, even I can follow it! I have to say the authors make a compelling case for considering SAN for certain small business scenarios. Storage requirements, even for small businesses, is rapidly growing and often the need to upgrade the server is driven by the need to increase the storage capacity. in the SAN scenario, data is stored on the disk arrays which sit on a separate network (fibre channel). The storage appears as if it is direct attached disks but additional disks can be added dynamically. As the storage is on a separate fibre channel network then disk I/O can be handled independently of other operations occuring over the ethernet based LAN. The book is a real eye opener on a potentially value added offering.