SANs

A storage area network (SAN) is a pool of storage systems that are interconnected to the servers in an enterprise. A SAN administrator is the person responsible for administering the various resources that make up the SAN.

A SAN allows the establishment of direct connections between storage devices and servers. It offers simplified storage management, scalability, flexibility, availability, and improved data access, movement, and backup.

A SAN storage system consists of two to eight Lenovo Storage V7000 nodes that are arranged in a clustered system. These nodes appear as part of the SAN fabric, along with the host systems, the RAID storage systems, and the storage devices, all connected together to create the SAN. Other devices such as fabric switches might be required to complete the SAN.

There are two types of SAN: redundant and counterpart. A redundant SAN consists of a fault tolerant arrangement of two counterpart SANs. A redundant SAN configuration provides two independent paths for each device attached to the SAN. A counterpart SAN is a non-redundant portion of a redundant SAN and provides all the connectivity of the redundant SAN, but without the redundancy. Each counterpart SAN provides an alternate path for each device attached to the SAN.

Note: For best availability, use a redundant SAN with the Lenovo Storage V7000. Non-redundant SANs are also supported.