Many IT organizations we've talked to this year are deep in the throes of storage-area

network implementations, while others have decided that SANs are not right for them or
to wait and see. Still others are just struggling to understand if SANs and network-
attached storage are different, complementary or just spelled backwards.

All of the research we've done shows that while there is much progress being made in
real-world networked storage implementations, there is still a huge education issue. Even
users who claim to be knowledgeable about and responsible for SANs are struggling to
understand all the ramifications of the alternative approaches.

Given the number of alternatives, vendors and components involved - not to mention the
rate of change occurring in networked storage - it's not surprising. Added to all this, of
course, is the marketing hype from the vendors saying everything is possible, and the
skeptics who say there is still no interoperability and no one is really successfully
implementing networked storage.

As part of this confusion, we get many questions about SANs, NAS and networked
storage. People also ask what technology is appropriate for which environments, and
where all of the technologies are headed. While I can't pretend to have a crystal ball, I
hope I can shed a little light.

NAS grew out of the concept of file servers as a service to manage files for clients on a
network. The file server approach achieved tremendous success through products such as
NetWare and Microsoft Windows NT Server. With a file server in front, large amounts of
storage could be hung from the server and served to users on a file-by-file basis.
Management and backup of that data could be centralized off the server. Over time it
became clear that a full network operating system was not necessary for file services, and
a trimmed-down version of the NOS function would suffice. A specialized server and
operating system with a set amount of storage, inside a box called a storage appliance,
could be put on a network to provide the storage function. This concept grew into the
NAS market, dominated by Network Appliance and expected to grow to more than $6
billion by 2003.

SANs on the other hand, grew up around the concept of taking storage devices and
storage-heavy traffic and creating a separate back-end network designed specifically for
that type of traffic. Separating ownership of a server from its storage and placing all the
storage devices directly on a Fibre Channel network allows a many-to-many connection
from servers to storage, and from storage to other storage devices. This approach grants
the benefits of traditional networking to storage devices, such as increased scalability,
availability and performance. Also, backups can be done without affecting the rest of a
network, because the back-up traffic is done over a separate SAN in LAN-free backup.

SANs initially have been based on Fibre Channel Arbitrated Loop for a basic setup or
switched fabric. Many users have implemented SANs in a basic configuration with a
Fibre Channel connection from multiple servers to one or two SAN-attached RAID
arrays, and in some cases a tape library.

The Fibre Channel SAN market today revolves around switch vendors (such as Brocade,
McData, Vixel and Ancor, which is now merged with Qlogic) and storage/server vendors
(such as EMC, StorageTek, Hewlett-Packard, Compaq and IBM).

The last six months have seen the definition of SANs expanding to include other
possibilities besides Fibre Channel, such as Gigabit Ethernet and SCSI over IP, and have
brought in new players such as Giganet and Nishan Systems. Users today who talk about
their SANs in some cases are actually describing an environment of NAS boxes
communicating across an Ethernet network. Some argue that this does not constitute a
SAN.

While we could spend a lot of time arguing the semantics, the bottom line is that NAS
and SAN technologies - as well as Fibre Channel, Gigabit Ethernet and SCSI over IP -
are creating a new approach to delivering storage services to a distributed user
community. As these technologies progress, the new era of networked storage is
providing choices that can fit into small and large user environments. This new approach
also will allow networked storage solutions to grow with the user while providing
improved scalability, availability, performance and centralized management.

RELATED LINKS

Barb Goldworm is an independent consultant with over twenty years experience in the
computer industry, with products targeting the enterprise, service provider and end-user
markets. Barb has held various technical, marketing, industry analyst and senior
management positions with Novell, IBM, StorageTek and several successful startup
ventures. She has had responsbility for both the Network and Systems Management and
Storage in the Enterprise Newsletters for NetworkWorld Fusion. Barb has been a frequent
speaker at industry conferences worldwide for over ten years, and was also the creator
and track chair for the Networld+Interop track on Networked Storage. Barb can be
reached at barbgoldworm@earthlink.net.
Network Appliance Web site

Giganet Web site

Brocade Web site

McData Web site

Vixel Web site

Ancor Communications Web site

EMC Web Site

Compaq Storage Web site

Nishan Systems Web site

NAS and SANs converge

Network World, 02/03/00

Archive of Network World on Storage in the Enterprise newsletters