FibreChannel – Zone & Zoning

• Switch-Based Access Control
• Analogous to an Ethernet Broadcast Domain
• Soft Zone
  - Zoning based on WWPN of Nodes Connected
  - Preferred
• Hard Zone
  - Zoning Based on Port Number on Switch to which the Nodes are Connected

FibreChannel - WWPN

• World-Wide Port Number
• A unique 64-bit hardware address for each FibreChannel Device
• Analogous to a 48-bit ethernet hardware address
• WWNN - World-Wide Node Number

FibreChannel Definitions

• WWPN
• Zone & Zoning
• LUN
• LUN Masking

SAN Delivers Business Benefits

Reduce Costs
-Storage consolidation
-Server consolidation
- Result: fewer resources to manage

Business Continuity
-Storage consolidation enables business continuity
-Consolidation reduces risks via multiple backup devices with multiple points of control
-Consolidated data—managed, controlled, and synchronized more efficiently

Business Flexibility
-Let IT manage growth more easily
-More information moves faster
-Meet your existing service-level agreements

Manageability
-Centralize storage management and automate control of devices
-Achieve storage-management efficiencies
-Fewer people manage more

SAN Benefits

• High availability and manageability
  All servers access same storage
  Simplified management
  Service for multiple platforms
• Application performance
  SAN provides a dedicated network
  Database-management system / transaction processing
  Fastest record access
• Fast scalability
  Hundreds of servers
  Hundreds of storage devices
  Leverages existing infrastructure
  Overcomes distance limitations
• Better replication and recovery options
• Storage consolidation optimizes total cost of ownership
  
  

Typical Data Center

SAN: Storage Area Network

•Block Oriented Access To Data

•Unique Writer

•I/O Protocol: SCSI, HIPPI, IPI

•“Back-end” Network

NAS and SAN

•NAS – Network Attached Storage

–File-oriented access
–Multiple Clients, Shared Access to Data

•SAN – Storage Area Network
–Block-oriented access
–Single Server, Exclusive Access to Data

NAS: Network Attached Storage

•File Objects and Filesystems

–OS Dependent
–OS Access & Authentication

•Possible Multiple Writers
–Require locking protocols

•Network Protocol: i.e., IP

•“Front-end” Network

How Hardware RAID Works ?

When any drive under RAID fails it informs the same through LED indication (or ‘Beep’), as well it can provide information over LAN (if supported and configured). At the same time the RAID CPU sets the state of other disks to ‘0’ (virtually, meaning those are available with data) and the failed slot to ‘1’. The administrator is supposed to replace the failed disk with a new one. On ‘snooping’ the new disk, it assigns the logic ‘1’ for the new disk (doing an ‘XOR’ function of all logical state of all other disks). Then the RAID logic starts ‘Rebuilding’ the data to the drive having logical state ‘1’ getting data from all logical state ‘0’ drives.
This kind of implementation is called ‘Hardware XOR’.