1. Storage area Network(SANs) Topics of presentation
What is Storage Area Network
Benefits of SAN Environment
SAN Components
Potential Storage Services Locations
Challenges of SAN Management
Ways to Manage a Storage Subsystem
WORLD WIDE NAMES
Simple Architecture of SAN
Redundant Architecture of SAN
Fibre channel vs. IP based technology
Summary of RAID levels
Storage services requirement

2. STORAGE AREA NETWORK
A dedicated network that interconnects hosts and storage devices, usually via fibre channel (FC) switches and optical fiber media. A storage device is a disk sub system array with a set of disk drives.
Local Area Network
Fibre Channel Servers
Fibre Channel Storage Area Network

3. Benefits of SAN Environment
Storage Consolidation
Concurrent Access by Multiple Hosts
Use in Disaster Recovery Applications
Reduced Total Cost of Ownership
Reduction of management complexity/overhead
Improved availability
Scalability
Improved data protection
Increased capacity usage

4. SAN Components FC cable
It is a high-speed data transmission technology used to connect multiple hosts and storage devices over fiber-optic or copper cables.
SFP Module
Small Form-Factor Pluggable (SFP) modules are transceivers that interface a motherboard with a FC cable and are used to covert electrical signals to optical signals required for fibre channel transmission to and from devices such as RAID controllers, switches and other fibre channel devices
Host bus adapters (HBAs)
It is also referred to as FC interface cards are installed into hosts. OS-specific device drivers are usually installed for these adapters.
Storage devices
RAID architecture where all disks are independently addressed.
Interconnect devices such as fibre channel hubs or switches. Other special-purpose devices are SAN gateways, bridges, routers, and extenders

5. Potential Storage Services Locations
Area of Intelligence
Hardware Platform
Host
Servers
Mainframes
Fabric
Appliances
Switches
Directors
Subsystem
Disks/RAIDs/Controllers
Filers
Tape Libraries

6. Challenges of SAN Management
A SAN must be managed at multiple points
Server OS
HBA
Switch
Storage Array
Dependencies
The biggest challenge is understanding the dependencies of the various elements upon each other.
Device drivers compatibility issues.
Problems
The new HBA has a different WWN than the old
one and so zoning information in the SAN.

7. Ways to Manage a Storage Subsystem
Out-of-Band Storage Subsystems
The controllers in the storage subsystem are managed directly over the network through the Ethernet connection on each controller in the storage subsystem.
In-Band Storage Subsystems
The controllers in the storage subsystem are managed through an Ethernet connection on a host instead of using the Ethernet
connections on each controller

8. WORLD WIDE NAMES
It guarantees uniqueness within a large SAN fabric. There are two type of WWNs:
Node WWNs—These are allocated to the entire adapter.
Port WWNs—These are assigned to each port within an adapter. These are used for SAN zoning

9. Simple Architecture
The Fibre Channel switch is an intelligent device that collects information about the SAN network topology and attached devices.
Switches Enable simultaneous communication between multiple endpoints (such as a server and storage disk)
Provide capabilities for managing those connections between devices so that access is controlled (through zoning)
Provide physical connectivity for failover and load balancing

10. Redundant Architecture
redundant components—controllers, switches, ports, HBAs
Cabling to ensure that there is no single point of failure.
No cable connection between the two switches.
Switches remain independent.

11. Redundancy in various component
Redundancy can be on host level Multiple HBA’s.
Redundancy can be on switch level two or more switches.
Redundancy can be on storage level ,connecting storage controller with Expansion units.

12. Fibre channel vs. IP based technology
Servers
Fibre Channel
Cost and complexity
Fibre Channel networking requires specialized expertise.
Fibre Channel networking components are considerably more expensive than IP.
Performance
4 GB Fibre Channel networking components available today
Deterministic performance IP
Cost and complexity
Ethernet and TC/IP networking technologies are familiar.
Ethernet networking components are less expensive.
One networking technology to network clients, servers, and storage.
Performance
1 GB Ethernet networking components available today
Not ideal for SAN solution
Fabric devices
Storage arrays

13. RAID levels
RAID 0 is the fastest and most efficient array type but offers no data redundancy or fault-tolerance.
RAID 1 is the array technique of choice for performance-critical, fault-tolerant environments and is the only choice for fault-tolerance if no more than two drives are available.
RAID 3 is a popular choice for data-intensive or single-user applications that access long sequential records. However, it does not typically allow multiple I/O operations to be overlapped.
RAID 5 is generally the best choice for multi-user environments that are not particularly sensitive to write performance. At least three, and typically five or more drives are required to build a RAID 5 array.

14. Storage services requirement
Manageability
Performance
Capacity
Security
Recoverability
Availability
Storage services require scalability in
Size
Speed
number of nodes
Distance
throughput
Reach

15. SAN Environment in NUST DATACENTER
Hosts
IBM Xseries 346 2
Switch
Brocade ibm 2005-H16 1
Storage controller
Ibm Ds 4300
HBA
Qlogic 2340
XSeries 346
Qlogic 2340
Brocade ibm 2005-H16

16. Enterprise Management Window
The Enterprise Management Window (EMW) provides high-level management of storage system