Designing Storage Area Networks

This is a fully updated revision of Designing Storage Area Networks. It collapses or removes dated material from the original edition and adds new content, particularly in the area of Fibre Channel fabrics, IP SANs and storage virtualization. Storage area networks are now recognized as the preferred solution for fulfilling a wide range of critical data storage needs for institutions and enterprises. The success of SANs in establishing real end-user value is affirmed by the adoption of the technology by all major solution providers as their flagship server and storage offerings. IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Sun, Dell and others now provide certified SAN configurations for performance, high availability and backup of storage data, while storage vendors such as EMC, Hitachi Data Systems, XIOtech and others offer SAN interfaces on their premier products. While the current market penetration of SAN-based solutions is only 20% of the total storage market, SANs are expected to capture the majority of the market within a few years.