Storage Area Networks ( SAN s)
Vladimir V. Riabov · The Internet Encyclopedia · 2004
Abstract This chapter identifies characteristics, architectural concepts, technologies, applications, and marketplace of storage area networks (SANs). The author reviews the fibre channel interconnect technology, hardware and software components that are necessary for building a storage network. The chapter contains a detailed description of recent innovations in IP‐based SANs: IP storage technologies, SANs over IP, fibre channel over IP, Internet fibre channel protocol, Internet SCSI, storage over IP, fabric shortest path first protocol, storage resource management, and adaptive network storage architecture. The review describes methods of storing large amounts of information, backing up data in e‐commerce, online transaction processing, electronic vaulting, data warehousing, data mining, multimedia Internet/intranet browsing, multimedia audio/video editing, HDTV streaming, and enterprise database managing applications.