Contents:

	Introduction
	Challenge: Managing Data, Managing Costs
	The Answer: Storage Area Networks
	Two SAN Alternatives
	Solution: Flexible SAN Solutions

Introduction		top of page

As the volume and criticality of corporate data grows exponentially, companies are seeking storage solutions that maximize their capacity, scalability and flexibility, while controlling costs. To meet the growing information needs of the business, IT managers must find ways to make more data more available to more users - while ensuring that data is properly protected.

Challenge: Managing Data, Managing Costs		top of page

Today, companies of all sizes - from small-to-medium sized businesses to large enterprises - are experiencing an unprecedented set of storage challenges, including the following:

• Dramatic growth in data, including both transactional data required to run the business and reference data.
• Increased requirements to keep data readily accessible and protected for rapid restoration to ensure business continuance and disaster recovery.
• Need to make data accessible to users, systems and applications across the organization, enabling greater collaboration and new data-driven capabilities and services.

Adding to these challenges are the budgetary realities facing many IT managers, who are constantly expected to do more with less.

Traditionally, companies have accommodated storage needs with Direct Attach Storage (DAS) solutions that link storage resources directly to associated servers or platforms. While DAS is suitable for environments with an individual server or a limited number of servers, the environment rapidly becomes unmanageable if there are multiple servers or significant data growth. Performance and scalability are limited and, in such multi-server environments, DAS resources cannot be efficiently allocated. DAS systems also limit data sharing and tie up valuable LAN bandwidth during backup windows.

The Answer: Storage Area Networks		top of page

Since their introduction nearly a decade ago, Storage Area Networks (SANs) have become a mainstay for companies looking to increase storage utilization and flexibility, while reducing total costs. By providing a network of storage resources to servers, SANs uncouple storage from individual platforms, allowing data transfer among all nodes on the storage network.

Once reserved for large enterprises, SANs are now within reach of small-to-medium sized businesses, thanks to recent technology advances - including the introduction of low-cost/high-performance Serial ATA disk, SAS drives, the mainstreaming of iSCSI data transport protocol, and existing moderate price drops in high-speed Fibre Channel solutions.

SAN Benefits
SANs offer a range of benefits that address the needs of today's data-intensive businesses:

• Lower total cost of ownership (TCO) - While the initial cost of a SAN solution may be higher than that of DAS, the inherent flexibility and scalability of a SAN, together with its reduced management complexity and cost, deliver long-term cost benefits. SANs can be tailored cost-effectively to a company's needs. When additional capacity is required, it can be expanded without downtime.
• Efficient capacity utilization - By consolidating storage resources and sharing capacity across multiple servers, SANs generally utilize 50% more capacity per storage device than DAS. This further optimizes the storage spend.
• Centralized storage management - By centralizing the management of all storage resources, even vast amounts of storage can be easily managed by a small IT staff. A single IT person can manage 4-7 times the amount of capacity as compared to DAS resources, dramatically reducing management costs and headaches.
• Superior data protection - SANs provide the infrastructure to implement advanced data protection features - like snapshot and mirroring/replication - to enhance backup and recovery and Disaster Recovery features critical to uptime and business success.
• Increased user productivity - By erasing technology boundaries between data and users across the enterprise, SANs increase collaboration and productivity, saving time and money and enhancing corporate profitability.

Two SAN Alternatives		top of page

With their growth in popularity and technology advances, two types of SAN solutions have emerged: one based on Fibre Channel interface technology; the other based on the more recent IP-based iSCSI protocol. Each offers its own set of advantages.

Fibre Channel - In this SAN infrastructure, storage and servers are linked via a high-speed network of interconnected Fibre Channel switches for high-speed, block-level data access. Advantages include:

• Very high performance - up to 2Gb throughput, making Fibre Channel ideal for demanding, transaction-intensive storage applications.
• Very high availability, enabling a range of redundant configurations to deliver the uninterrupted data access required for mission-critical applications.
• Proven SAN technology, with a solid track record of reliability in demanding enterprise environments.

While these benefits are compelling, the high cost of Fibre Channel technology - and its requirement for specialized IT knowledge and skills - has generally limited its use to mission-critical applications for large enterprises.

iSCSI - This SAN infrastructure leverages the flexibility and ubiquity of IP network and Ethernet technology to deliver all the consolidation, scalability and flexibility benefits of a SAN, at a lower cost than fibre channel advantages include:

• Very cost-effective - iSCSI SANs utilize low-cost IP network elements to deliver a Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) 43% lower than that of DAS...and 50% lower TCO than FC SANs.
• Easy to deploy and manage, leveraging industry-standard IP technology, standards and protocols and requiring only limited staffing, with no specialized skill sets.

These advantages have made iSCSI SANs a popular alternative for smaller organizations and workgroups seeking a cost-effective solution. They are ideal for Windows, Linux, and Novell environments where server proliferation is making storage management complex and expensive.

Figure 1: SAN Solution

Which to Choose?

Which SAN alternative is right for your organization? The table below addresses specific criteria, capabilities and limitations for each SAN technology.

Solution: Flexible SAN Solutions		top of page

Adaptec enables you to take full advantage of today's industry-leading SAN technologies with a full range of solutions that deliver the highest level of data availability and performance in any environment. Adaptec offers:

• Fibre Channel SAN solutions that provide the ultra-high performance and availability required for demanding enterprise environments.
• iSCSI SAN solutions that leverage the cost-effectiveness of IP technology to provide cost-effective storage environments that are easy to deploy and manage.
• Advanced SAN management software designed to enhance uptime and reduce management costs for your networked storage infrastructure.
• Advanced data protection software - Adaptec mirroring and snapshot - that lets you tailor your SAN to your business continuance requirements, allowing you to cost-effectively deploy and manage a high-availability solution to ensure that your critical data is protected, backed-up and quickly restorable.

Based on open industry standards, Adaptec products offer the flexibility to select best-of-breed hardware and software, simplifying integration, deployment and maintenance.

Adaptec protects your storage technology investment and reduces your risk through extensive interoperability testing. So you can build best-of-breed storage solutions with confidence...and without the headaches.

Through the Adaptec Connect Solution Partner Program, we work with leading industry partners to give you the flexibility to leverage industry-leading hardware and software to ensure your valuable data is protected and secure.

Let Adaptec show you how to meet your company's storage challenges with SAN solutions that combine unparalleled performance and flexibility with unmatched value.

Expansion storage units utilize cost-effect, high-performance, highly-reliable, SATA/SAS interconnects and disk drives to dramatically effects the overall costs of storage.