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Storage Networking Primer Home

What Storage Networking Is and What It Can Mean to You
from Storage Area Network Essentials, by Richard Barker & Paul Massiglia.
Copyright© 2002, John Wiley & Sons, Inc. New York. Used by Permission.
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Contents

What Is a Storage Area Network?

• What Makes a SAN Different?
• What Makes a Good SAN?
• What Makes a Great SAN?

Why Connect Storage to a Network?

The Secret to SANs' Success: Software

• SAN Software Capability
• Summarizing SANs and Software

The Best Is Yet to Come: Radical Changes in Information Storage and Processing

• Best-in-Class Computer Systems
• Smarter Storage and Appliances
• Heterogeneous Computer Systems
• Data Storage as a Service

Back to Earth ....A Couple of Closing Clarifications

• Is a SAN Storage or a Network?
• What Is This Area Thing, Anyway?
• Is NAS Just SAN Spelled Backward?
• Summary

In this chapter we'll learn more about:

• What a storage area network is
• What properties a storage area network must have, should have, and may have
• The importance of software to storage area networks
• Why information services professionals should be interested in storage networking
• Information processing capabilities enabled by storage area networks
• Some quirks in the vocabulary of storage networking

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