One of the major challenges that faces any organization with digital data is how to maximize storage availability while minimizing the amount of time and money spent maintaining it. Server SAN is a concept of storage that does exactly that, reducing the amount of capital investment necessary to pool storage resources and limiting the number of personnel required to manage it. As Wikibon analyst Stuart Miniman explained, Server SAN “sits at the intersection of hyperscale, convergence and flash trends” culminating in an all-inclusive storage solution.

What is Server SAN?

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SAN stands for “storage area network”. In traditional networked storage, separate storage devices are required and must be networked and maintained just as the servers and other devices that access them. These storage arrays, such as NAS (network attached storage) and SAN introduce additional costs to the data center and often require licensing for storage software, support and maintenance.

Now imagine a system built with scalable storage that is internal to multiple servers. If your storage becomes seamless, you can manage it from a single software solution while also paying less for hardware and maintenance. Servers are connected through high speed interconnect such as InifiBand or Low Latency Ethernet, and the applications that use it are specially configured for high availability. This is Server SAN in essence.

Why is it so wonderful?

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Server SAN consolidates storage software and servers onto the server, eliminating the need for standalone storage arrays. In keeping with the spirit of converged infrastructure, Server SAN integrates your storage and applications and keeps all of it within the working server network you already have.

While the components are often advertised and sold for their features, the ultimate goal is still a software-defined data center that is fully automated or as close to automation as possible. Chad Sakac, SVP of Global SE at EMC, said of storage virtualization, “The name of the game is hyper automation in the end. It’s not storage. It’s not networking. It’s not even compute.”

The ultimate goal and dream of software-defined data centers, he explained, is to solve the question, “How do we make all of the infrastructure, in essence, invisible?”

Among its lengthy list of potential benefits, Server SAN:

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• can use either hard disk or flash storage
• supports storage virtualization (such as VMware’s VSAN)
• also supports physically attached storage devices
• produces minimal latency because the data is close in proximity to the processors
• supports multiple applications and volumes
• offers high scalability and high availability, the ability to add capacity and performance on an as-needed basis
• establishes software-defined storage
• features many of the benefits of Servers while also offering network sharing support that Servers do not
• is more affordable than traditional SAN or NAS (network attached device) storage
• does not involve as much network overhead as public cloud storage

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At the core of it all is Server SAN’s cost effectiveness. After all, that is the primary driving force when choosing a storage solution. With this software-defined solution, enterprises can tear down the silos and operate in an environment where their technology is converged and automated to maximize performance and reduce cost. Furthermore, because it is designed to scale easily, it significantly lowers migration and upgrade costs over time. On a practical level, those users who actual access the storage on a regular basis benefit from a centralized storage system. If you have ever had to look for data on a network and had to scour through multiple network drives, you will appreciate that. Professionals can get work done faster, which also ultimately helps the company financially by raising productivity.

Crowd  Influencers Weights In With Commentary – CrowdChat #serversan

link: www.Crowdchat.net/ServerSan

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