The Storage Networking Industry Association is a non-profit trade association dedicated to insuring that storage networks become complete and trusted solutions across the IT community by:

• Sponsoring technical work groups
• Co-producing the Storage Networking World conference series
• Maintaining a vendor neutrual Technology Centre in Colorado Springs
• Promoting activities that expand the breadth and quality of the storage networking market

SNIAs definition of a SAN addresses information storage, information interconnects, and information logistics.

A network whose primary purpose is the transfer of data between computer systems and storage elements and along storage elements. 

Consists of a communication infrastructure, which provides physical connections, and a management layer, which organizes the connection, storage elements, and computer systems so that data transfer is secure and robust.

• Information Storage
  • Storing information reliably and securely
  • Accessing information reliably and securely
• Information Interconnect
  • Create a flexible extensible infrastructure
  • Enabling just-in-time scalability (highly scalable)
• Information Logistics
  • Managing information flow
  • Deriving value from information

• Accessing information reliably and securely
• flexible, extensible, and highly scalable infrastructures
• effectively managing information resources to derive value

• Mainframe systems consist of monolythic components that can be difficult to scale and limit flexibility.
• The system uses proprietary technologies designed by the same vendor and can be easy to manage because they don't have to contend with open systems -- ease of management comes with the cost of scalability and flexibility.
• Open systems approach provides more flexibility in terms of faster and more flexible deployment options, also avoiding vendor lock.
• Still suffers from scalability issues in computing power and storage because it relies on smaller, distributed, heterogenous components.

• Storage virtualization can create a unified storage pool, just like mainframe storage cabinets.
• Tightly integrated server clusters and blade architectures integrate microcomputer CPUs into a unified computing resource

• Monolithic systems simplify system management but have limited flexibility.
• Today's SAN-enabled computing architectures consist of smaller, easily re-deployable components used as building blocks to create highly scalable systems.
• Providing more flexibility for the it organization, but integrating and managing multi-vendor environments creates new challenges.

• Since the first busines-critical application hit the market.
• Rapid growth of the internet
• Email messages (sent daily)
  • 1995:  400,000,000
  • 2000:  9,700,000,000
  • 2005:  35,000,000,000
• Digital audio and video require massive amounts of storage space
• Some customer relationship mnagement (CRM) applications record every click a user makes on a website

• The old storage paradigm was server centric and focused on data
  • There might be hundreds or thousands of storage subsystem islands throughout the enterprise.
  • Businesses accumulated and warehoused data
  • Data was viewed as a competitive aspect and was guarded
  • Data was stored in isolated, independent systems.
• The new storage paradigm is information centric
  • Storage networking allows transparent access to information stored from anywhere on the network
  • Information is more easily accessed, managed, and centralized
  • The focus has shifted from storing the data to using the information the data contains
  • Businesses have realized the ability to share information is more of a competitive asset
  • Businesses require accessible, open systems in order to effectively share information

• Must be prepared to respond to rapid growth
• Must be able to add capacity with very short planning windows and minimal disruption to operations
• Application performance, as well as capacity, must also be able to scale quickly

• More storage means more servers
  • cost of server hardware, software, installation, and maintenance can triple the cost of new storage.
  • Increased implementation time decreases business agility
  • More servers means more single points of failure, increasing the risk of downtime
• With server-attached storage the need to add more servers for more storage is because of
  • The limited number of devices that can be managed by a server's SCSI bus
  • The server's total processing capability

• 99% -- 3 days
• 99.7% -- 1 day
• 99.9% -- 8 hours
• 99.99% -- 1 hour
• 99.999% -- 5 minutes

• Availability is a valuable asset when your competitor's website is just a click away
• Many businesses insist on 5 9's of availability - 5 minutes of downtime per year
• IT's focus has shifted from backup and recovery to business continuity
• The demand for total availability means that systems cannot be taken down for scheduled maintenance, including upgrades and backups
• When a failure does occur, recovery must be nearly instantaneous, with no loss of data
• Over 2/3 of IT organizations in a recent survey are considering 24x7 operations