SAN consolidation strategies - Storage Technology Magazine - Page 1

SAN consolidation strategies

Following sound SAN design strategies allows you to reduce the number of SAN islands, strengthen your primary SAN, make storage easier to manage and provide more data protection.


Project-based and departmental SAN islands are multiplying faster than rabbits and are relatively inexpensive, easy to build and require little planning. But SAN islands carry a hidden cost: The benefits of isolated SANs vanish rapidly as more of them are added to the storage infrastructure.

A SAN island's single-purpose nature makes it very uneconomical, and the aggregate cost for storage and storage management of small SAN islands can be eye-opening. This wasn't an issue during the dot-com years when funds seemed inexhaustible, but the ensuing economic dip ushered in an era of consolidation and centralization; in other words, doing more with less. SAN consolidation has the following benefits:

  • Simpler storage management


  • A higher degree of storage resource utilization (capacity, bandwidth, storage controller, I/Os, storage management staff)


  • Increased reliability of the storage infrastructure


  • Enables tiered storage


  • Simplified compliance and disaster recovery (DR) processes

    Requires Free Membership to View

    When you register for SearchStorage.com, you’ll also receive targeted emails from my team of award-winning editorial writers. Our goal is to keep you informed on the hottest topics, the latest news and the biggest challenges you face as a storage professional today.

    Rich Castagna, Editorial Director

    By submitting your registration information to SearchStorage.com you agree to receive email communications from TechTarget and TechTarget partners. We encourage you to read our Privacy Policy which contains important disclosures about how we collect and use your registration and other information. If you reside outside of the United States, by submitting this registration information you consent to having your personal data transferred to and processed in the United States. Your use of SearchStorage.com is governed by our Terms of Use. You may contact us at webmaster@TechTarget.com.

This was first published in December 2006