Comprehensive Analysis: Storage Area Networks, Reasons, & Properties

This report analyzes the reasons for the introduction of Storage Area Networks (SANs), highlighting their role in addressing challenges related to information organization, application performance, and operational costs. SANs are presented as intelligent, elastic, and controllable storage solutions that enhance data efficiency while minimizing expenses. The report details key properties of SANs, including scalability, performance, data separation, long-distance connectivity, increased utilization, and disaster recovery capabilities. By offering block-level network access to storage, SANs provide a specialized, secure, and high-speed network that optimizes data management and ensures effective disaster recovery processes through spanning across geographically diverse locations.

Running head: CLOUD COMPUTING 1
Cloud Computing
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Analyze the reasons for the introduction of storage area networks and their properties
The biggest challenge in the modern world is the deficiency in terms of information
organization, reduced performing applications, and the inability to reduce operational costs.
Therefore, the advent of storage area network, commonly referred to as a data center, was
introduced to resolve the problem of information management, enhance the sped of
performing the application, and reduce cost. Indeed, storage area network (SAN) is an
intelligent, highly elastic and easy to control storage resolution, which enables the user to
ensure efficiency and structure of existent data and at the same time minimize the operational
costs (Tate, & International Business Machines Corporation, 2017). In this sense, SAN is a
specialized, secure, and high-speed network that offers blocked-level network access to
storage.
Properties of storage area network
Scalability: storage area network is not restricted by disk space. SAN grows with the
increase in the user’s needs
Performance: The performance of SAN is not interfered by Ethernet traffic and other
blockages since data is conveyed along with a private net.
Data separation: SAN has removed the worries of private information falling into the
erroneous hands by ensuring that there is no possibility of an individual’s data being stolen or
copied by another person using the same NAS.
Connectivity over long distances: SAN has an upper hand over distance, an aspect
that allows users to merge their storage into a remote location to as long as six miles.
Increased utilization: Instead of using thousands of partially used hard disk, that waste
space, and power, SAN has numerous disks; hence, it uses space effectively.

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Disaster recovery: SAN has facilitated effective disaster recovery processes through
spanning over great locations that contain a secondary storage array (Fan et al., 2017).
Consequently, this allows the replication that is executed by server software or the disk array
controllers.

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References
Fan, B., Kadav, A., Nightingale, E. B., Elson, J. E., Rashid, R. F., & Mickens, J. W.
(2017). U.S. Patent No. 9,778,856. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark
Office.
Tate, J., & International Business Machines Corporation. (2017). Introduction to storage
area networks. New York: Poughkeepsie.