Where should storage intelligence reside?

What you will learn from this tip: Where to put storage intelligence on your network, given your specific storage environment.

On the switch. For environments with heterogeneous storage arrays and servers, minimal anticipated growth and a small team of administrators, placing storage intelligence on the switch makes sense. Products from smaller companies may be acceptable, but more established shops will probably want to consider products from EMC Corp., IBM and Veritas Software Corp. as they become widely available.

On an appliance. Appliances make sense for heterogeneous array, server and switch environments where growth is dynamic and unpredictable. Appliances can fit into existing deployments without forklift upgrades. Larger shops new to this space may want to experiment with

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No intelligence in the network. There are good arguments for keeping switches stupid. With switches prices as low as $200 per port, keeping intelligence on the host and storage arrays is a cost-effective option for relatively small environments with just one storage array or servers with the same operating system.

Read the rest of SAN switch smarts.

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