What are SAN storage protocols?

A storage area network (SAN) is a specialised, high-speed network or subnetwork that links together storage pools and makes them available to various servers.

Enterprise computing has serious issues with storage accessibility and availability. Many enterprise applications can benefit from the simplicity and low cost of traditional direct-attached disc deployments within individual servers. Still, the discs and the crucial data they hold are bound to the physical server via a specialised interface, such as SAS. Modern enterprise computing frequently requires a significantly higher level of organisation, flexibility and control. These demands influenced the development of the storage area network (SAN).

SAN technology provides a distinct, dedicated, highly scalable, high-performance network designed to connect many servers to various storage devices to meet sophisticated business storage demands. The storage can then be set up and controlled as tiers or pools that work together. Utilising additional technologies, such as data deduplication and RAID, can optimise storage capacity and significantly improve storage resilience when compared to traditional Direct-Attached Storage (DAS). A SAN enables an organisation to treat storage as a single collective resource that can be centrally replicated and protected.

Businesses that require performance and storage space frequently use storage area networks (SAN). A SAN links servers to various logical disc units (LUNs) for block-level storage. The list and a brief description of the different SAN protocols are below.

Fibre Channel Protocol (FCP)

The most popular SAN protocol is FCP. It employs SCSI instructions along with Fibre Channel transport protocols.

iSCSI

The next-most popular SAN transfers SCSI commands across IP Ethernet by enclosing them in Ethernet frames.

Fibre Channel over Internet

In that it encases Ethernet in Fibre Channel and employs an IP Ethernet network for transmission, this technology is comparable to iSCSI.

NVMe

Using PCIe and the NVMe protocol to access flash storage. This protocol can accommodate thousands of concurrent queries, which helps it handle thousands of commands.

A SAN is a network designed to link servers and storage. Any SAN's objective is to remove storage from individual servers and place it elsewhere where storage resources may be controlled and safeguarded centrally. Implementing such centralisation involves installing drives into a specific storage subsystem like a storage array. However, centralised control can also be handled logically by software, such as VMware vSAN, which uses virtualisation to identify and combine available storage.

Storage traffic performance can be optimised and expedited by connecting the collective storage to servers across a different network from the conventional LAN because the storage traffic no longer needs to compete for LAN bandwidth required by servers and their workloads. As a result, enterprise workloads may be able to access incredible storage volumes more quickly. The host layer, the fabric layer, and the storage layer are the three main layers that make up a SAN.


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