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Storage Area Networks: Are They Hyped or for Real?

Overview

Storage area networks (SANs) are basically storage versions of LANs or local area networks connected by fibre channel. Fibre channel is a high-speed storage networking technology that serves as the backbone for SANs. A SAN allows all storage devices to be available to all servers on a LAN.

The Choice of IT Managers

SAN represents the best performing networking storage technology today, as it eliminates bandwidth bottlenecks that were commonplace with older storage to server systems like SCSI. Currently, no other storage architecture can claim the level of speed that SANs are capable of delivering, making it the storage architecture of choice for IT managers.

Advantages of SAN

The SAN storage architecture is still in its infancy, but it has already found a killer application in the short term with the back up of data. Due to SAN's broadband capabilities, it takes backup traffic off a company's primary or non-storage network which enables a company to backup its data during business hours. Computer professionals recommend that companies have two to three backups of all of their files to be prepared should some unforeseen disaster occur. SAN also offers the advantage of distance. In a SAN, storage devices can be placed up to 500 meters apart by using fiber optic cable. The ability to separate storage devices by this much distance can minimize a company's exposure to damages from a single catastrophic event. In other words, by separating its storage devices by significant distances a company stands a greater chance of losing only one storage device instead of several should a disaster occur.

The Players in SAN

The first article in this series mentioned Gadzoox in the SAN area, but there are several other significant SAN players such as Brocade {BRCD}, Vixel {VIXL}, Emulex {EMLX}, and Qlogic {QLGC}. Qlogic and Emulex focuses more on fibre channel than on the actual SANs - which means that it concentrates on the broadband aspects of storage technology. Brocade, the SAN stock with the largest market cap by far, also focuses largely on fibre channel by providing fibre channel fabric solutions to the SAN backbone. Gadzoox has become the leading SAN solution provider with a 66 percent market share in the SAN hub and switch segment and over a 98 percent market share in the SAN managed hub market. Vixel is a major industry player that just went public in September.

Weaknesses of SANs

For all their potential, SANs are not without their problems. According to John William Toigo's The Holy Grail of Storage Management, IT professionals must have extensive knowledge to manage SANs properly as SANs encompass both storage and networking technologies. This combination of network and storage technology makes SANs more difficult to manage than traditional storage systems. Normally, network managers do not purchase SANs. System administrators buy SANs, and they usually know little about LANs. Another weakness of SANs is that they are completely dependant on fibre channel. Fibre channel is largely a niche technology that is very expensive to integrate into a company's larger network, which is usually Ethernet-based.

Summary

SANs are currently the best performing storage architecture - which makes them attractive to IT managers. The SAN architecture also looks to be well represented in the stock market with such high flying SAN stocks as Brocade, Emulex, and Gadzoox. However, investors may want to consider that SANs represent only a temporary solution for storage issues. The biggest advantage of SANs is the speed with which data can be retrieved. The SAN does not encumber other LAN functionality because the SAN is a network unto itself. However, what happens when a company's regular computer network increases its bandwidth so much that it can support storage devices on that network without any significant performance loss?