Storage Networking

[March 26, 2010] Data center networking convergence is coming; what will it mean for existing Ethernet storage protocols?

[March 19, 2010] Storage salaries can reach six figures, but how do you break into the field when every company wants experience?

[March 15, 2010] The data storage giant envisions a massive, global storage network without distance, performance or data consistency limitations.

[February 16, 2010] EMC's Atmos cloud storage system gets new levels of data protection and a big boost in performance and capacity.

[January 14, 2010] Cisco offers its Fibre Channel SAN customers new services for security, data migration and I/O acceleration.

[December 31, 2009] New technologies like phase change memory could make storage networks irrelevant unless the industry bands together to address I/O bottlenecks.

[December 29, 2009] The author explains common RAID levels — and makes a case for why you should consider RAID 10.

[November 16, 2009] Not only might NAS replace SAN in the coming world of Ethernet-based storage, but the distinctions between the two might also disappear.

[November 6, 2009] RAID is laboring to keep up with explosive data growth, but experts see ways to make the technology go further.

[October 9, 2009] Bandwidth and data integrity issues could limit enterprise use of external storage clouds.

[September 17, 2009] The long-running data storage technology could be headed for trouble. We look at the problem — and potential solutions.

[August 14, 2009] Cisco is no longer pursuing InfiniBand, but other vendors and analysts see continued growth and opportunities in the IB market.

[June 18, 2009] Recent steep drops in the price of 10Gb Ethernet NICs mean that Fibre Channel's decade-long dominance will soon be over.

[June 12, 2009] With cross-platform compatibility, a plethora of features and a hard-to-beat price tag, Openfiler is giving enterprises an attractive alternative to proprietary network storage operating systems.

[March 21, 2008] Routing for your storage network is a non-standardized thicket that's nothing like what you're used to on your IP networks, but it pays to understand how it works.

[January 18, 2008] You can throw up a SAN in no time, but ensuring scalability takes careful planning.

[December 7, 2007] SANs can do some pretty fancy things that would otherwise be impossible.

[November 15, 2007] Networked storage isn't a plug-and-play proposition. Here's how to configure your configure your storage for optimal reliability.

[November 2, 2007] Anyone can plug in a SAN. Understanding Fibre Channel domains, address assignment and VSANs will help you make that SAN resilient to change.

[October 12, 2007] Troubleshooting a SAN requires some knowledge of how the underlying protocols work. Here's the Fibre Channel protocol in-depth.

[October 5, 2007] Fibre Channel has long been the main storage area networking protocol, and for good reason.

[September 28, 2007] It involves some tedium, but configuring disk arrays is the most critical part of building a SAN. Here's what you need to know.

[June 15, 2007] NAS gateways help make the most of SANs and LANs.

[October 5, 2005] Big things have been predicted for iSCSI for years, but there is some evidence that the IP storage technology's time may have finally arrived.

[February 15, 2005] Three NAS operating systems are vying for market share. Which is best?

[May 5, 2003] The advent and rapid availability of iSCSI is changing the terms of the NAS/SAN debate. Tom Clark goes beyond the marketing-inspired, quasi-religious disputes of NAS versus SANs in discussing the essential factors to consider when determining whether to utilize NAS or an iSCSI/Fibre Channel-based SAN.

[September 21, 2002] John Vacca looks at the factors you should consider when planning a SAN implementation in this classic (and more relevant than ever) article on bringing your organization's e-business ambitions in line with its storage needs.

[February 26, 2002] In part II of our series articles on storage basics, we introduce the basic purpose and function of a storage area network and examine its role in modern network environments

[January 2, 2002] Are you new to network storage? If so then this series of articles is for you! Over the next few months we are going to take a look at the basic principles of network storage and answer questions like 'What is network storage?' and 'Why do we use it?' After covering the basics, subsequent articles will look at specific technologies in more detail. All of the articles in the series will have one simple aim; to educate and inform you about network storage.

[November 21, 2001] Surveys show that managers want SANs as a way to improve disaster recovery, availability, and scalability with less emphasis on improved data sharing, performance, protection, and administration. So what does the future hold?

[March 16, 2001] With the introduction of NAS (Network Attached Storage) companies and individuals alike now have an easy and efficient way of simply adding network storage without dealing with costly down time.

[July 13, 2001] Networked storage will continue to see a truce, if not a nice cooperative friendship, between SAN and NAS devices

[March 13, 2002] In part III of our series articles on storage basics, we introduce the basic purpose and function of network attached storage and examine its role in modern network environments

[September 30, 2002] John Vacca concludes his look at implementing a SAN with discussions of various topics, including SAN backup considerations, implementing SAN clustering, and the integration of SAN appliances.

[May 27, 2003] Since the advent of SANs, customers have complained that storage area networks are difficult to manage. While SANs are unlikely to ever become self-configuring and self-administrating, industry-sponsored efforts like SNIA's Storage Management Initiative (SMI) and the integration of SAN-aware functionality into OSes should make it much easier for customers to deploy and support SANs in the near future.