Performance Support

Storage: SAN Attached Hosts

Transcript
Host computer systems can be thought of as typical physical server systems with an operating system installed on them. Like in our example here, a server system is made up of physical components like processors, memory, disk, expansion card such as network interface cards, and other components. In the example we have here a simple rack mounted server with internal disk with an operating system installed on it. A SA attached host can be thought of in the same way. !ake the same host that we had in the previous slide and add a host bus adaptor, or H"A card, which is used to attach the server to the SA so that it can access storage from SA storage devices. #uch like a network card an H"A is physically installed into the computer and then the H"A drivers are installed from the operating system level which allows the operating system to communicate to the SA device over the H"As. SA attached hosts can come in the form of $indows servers, Linux servers, Solaris servers, and others. So in our example here, we have the same server from the previous slide, but now we%re attaching it to a SA so that it can access centrali&ed storage. So why take a server and make it into a SA attached host' Some of the reasons that we would implement SA s and attach host systems is in the case where the servers re(uire high levels of reliability, high levels of disk performance or re(uires additional storage features offered by SA based arrays. In some cases we would also attach a server to the SA for capacity reasons. !he physical server may not be able to hold enough physical disk drives to meet the needs of the server. A SA attached host is provided greater performance, up)time, and flexibility than a server that utili&es local storage. Large businesses and enterprises have seen great benefits from utili&ing SA storage and deploying SA attached hosts. !his has been an overview of SA attached hosts. !hanks for watching.

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