Storage Networking Essay

Submitted By jjauriada
Words: 1075
Pages: 5

With the rapid growth of the Internet through the late 1990s, almost all companies and organizations became dependent on the continuous availability of their IT systems, with many organizations setting an objective of 99.99% availability of critical systems. As IT systems have become increasingly critical to the smooth operation of a company, and arguably the economy as a whole, the importance of ensuring the continued operation of those systems, and their rapid recovery, has increased. While preventing a natural disaster is very difficult, measures such as good planning which includes mitigation measures can help reduce or avoid losses. This increasing dependence on IT systems, as well as increased awareness from large-scale disasters such as terrorism or fire, contributed to the further growth of various disaster recovery related industries and storage networking solutions. Storage costs are growing faster than server costs. Businesses need more efficient, cost-effective, and responsive storage area networks (SANS), without increasing overall power consumption. A storage network is any network that's designed to transport block-level storage protocols. Hosts (servers), disk arrays, tape libraries and just about anything else can connect to a SAN. Generally, one would use a SAN switch to connect all devices, and then configure the switch to allow friendly devices to pair up. The entire concept is about flexibility: in a SAN environment you can move storage between hosts, virtualize your storage at the SAN level, and obtain a higher level of redundancy than was ever possible with direct-attached storage. A SAN typically has its own network of storage devices that are generally not accessible through the local area network by other devices. In today's environments that must comply with government regulations for data recovery, 24-hour access to critical information is imperative.

Today's organizations small or large, high availability is essential, especially in industries with strict compliance and regulatory requirements such as financial services, legal services, and government. In an enterprise SAN, director-class switches are expected to be the most robust and reliable components; failure to provide high availability can mean a significant loss of revenue, productivity, and reputation. Storage networking has become an essential ingredient in Internet information infrastructures. Becoming competent in this new and important technology area requires a sound understanding of storage technologies and principles. Storage Networking Fundamentals gives you an in-depth look into the most important storage technologies. The entire storage landscape is described, incorporating a complete view of system, device, and subsystem operations and processes. Learn how to protect data effectively using mirroring, RAID, remote copy, and backup/ recovery systems. Virtual storage technologies, such as volume management, RAID, and network virtualization, are analyzed and discussed in detail. High-availability storage through dynamic multipathing and clustered/distributed file systems is explained as are designs for robust storage subsystems. Cisco SAN-based solutions are designed to build an effective business continuance strategy.

Cisco offers next-generation storage network solutions. Cisco storage area networks provide, multiprotocol storage networking, unified OS and management tools, enterprise-class storage connectivity, and services-oriented SAN. Cisco MDS 9000 family switches have been built on central switching fabrics to ensure fair treatment of all storage traffic. This treatment aids consistent performance , regardless of whether traffic needs to be switched within a single line card or from one card to another. The Cisco MDS 9100 Series Multilayer Fabric Switch. The benefits of using Cisco MDS 9100 are cost-effective support for enterprise-level capabilities like virtualization, Ease of use, configuration, and