Linking SAN islands

摘要

Storage-area networks have helped scores of organizations more easily allocate and manage storage resources, but most SAN installations are dedicated to servers supporting one application. To gain more value, these SAN islands need to be integrated. But what is the best way to do that? Because SANs weren't initially designed to work together, a number of issues come into play, from performance and stability to political hurdles concerning who has responsibility for what. The latter can be more challenging than any of the tech problems. What follows is a summary of lessons learned from network executives and storage experts who already have started down the path of integrating SANs. The bottom line is that while technology in this area is still maturing and standards have yet to be defined, it makes sense to at least start moving in this direction.