Enterprise Storage Solutions

Enterprise Servers - High Availability Computing - Enterprise Storage - Data Protection - Software Solutions - Information Lifecycle Management - IT Consolidation - Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity - Data Center Management Software - Desktop Virtualization - Converged Infrastructure - IT Virtualization

SAN - NAS - DAS - iSCSI - HP XP Disk Array Family - HP Enterprise Virtual Array - HP Modular Smart Array - Disk Drive Types - D2D and VTL - Tape Libraries - CAS

As the Storage Networking Industry has matured, businesses now have multiple robust choices for deploying Networked Storage Solutions in their Data Centers. Traditionally, data has been stored on Direct Attached Storage (DAS), which can still be a viable solution for certain small IT environments; however, larger environments need to leverage the benefits of networked storage devices, such as simplified and centralized storage management, higher scalability, higher performance and higher Service Levels of Availability. The three most common Networked Storage topologies used today are:
• FC SAN - Fibre Channel Storage Area Network
• iSCSI SAN - iSCSI Storage Area Network
• NAS - Network Attached Storage (based on SMB/CIFS and NFS)

These topologies and protocols define how application servers ultimately communicate with their respective storage devices such as Storage Arrays, Tape Drives and Tape Libraries, Network Switches, Virtualization Appliances, etc.

Just as it is important to select the appropriate Network Storage topologies for each specific IT environment, it is also critical to deploy the proper type of Storage Devices for the backend in terms of their availability, performance and cost. Industry leaders often refer to different tiers of storage as Online, Near-Online, Nearline and Archive Storage.