If any technology is transforming from budget buster into budget saver, it's storage area networks. Just a few years ago the cost per gigabyte of SAN storage and the expertise necessary to implement a SAN far exceeded the resources of small and even midsize businesses. That has changed dramatically thanks to SATA, iSCSI, and the no-brainer setup software some vendors have begun including with their SAN hardware. Today, you can get a terabyte of networked storage for less than $10,000, and the capabilities of the included management software can be astonishing. For a sample of what's available, see our January roundup of starter SANs (infoworld.com/2696).
展开▼
