Storage Area Networks (SAN)

| High Availability for Block-Level Data Transfer |

SAN is a dedicated, high performance storage network that transfers data between servers and storage devices, separate from the local area network. SAN is traditionally implemented for mission-critical applications in the enterprise space.

SAN have built in a wide variety of failover and fault tolerance features to ensure maximum uptime. They also offer excellent scalability for large enterprises that anticipate significant growth in information storage requirements. SAN devices is connected to servers using Fiber Channel which is a highly reliable technology that enables simultaneous communication among workstations, mainframes, servers, data storage systems and other peripherals.

The strength of SAN lies in its ability to move large blocks of data with higher levels of performance and availability, Load-balancing across the network, fast data transfer while reducing I/O latency and server workload. The benefit is that large numbers of users can simultaneously access data without creating bottlenecks on the local area network and servers.