Counterpoint: Why does a SAN access data from the server faster than a hard drive?

Counterpoint: Why does a SAN access data from the server faster than a hard drive?

Why does a SAN access data from the server faster then a local hard drive?

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A local hard drive's transfer is limited by the sustained data transfer rate for that individual disk drive. In a SAN, the storage connection is typically to a storage system that has cache, so the transfer may be handled at electronic speeds (writes will always go to cache and the read depends on the locality of reference and the caching algorithm) up the data rate for the SAN. For Fibre Channel, that could be up to 2 Gbps or 1 Gbps.

Read Greg Schulz' answer to this question.

This was first published in September 2004