Kanatek is at the forefront of architecting, testing and deploying SAN implementations.

SAN solutions are Cost effective, Highly Available, scalable and based on a modular design. At Kanatek, we take a measured, rational approach to SAN architecture and deployment: we utilize only proven technologies; we focus on scalability and creating a foundation for future growth; and we emphasize reliability and technology investment protection every step of the way.

SANs were traditionally designed for applications such as database-management systems and online transaction processing programs, which demand block-level disk access rather than file-level access. SANs consolidate data into shared storage arrays and remove the storage burden from your servers, linking the arrays, servers, and backup tape libraries into a back-end network. SANs typically are Fibre Channel based, and a Fibre Channel switching fabric (such as the one provided by Brocade) or hubs tie the devices together.

There are many reasons why SANs are effective in handling the expanding data requirements of large organizations.

There are many benefits to a well-designed and managed SAN.

• The fibre channel fabric-based Storage Area Network (SAN) is rapidly emerging as the new paradigm in distributed storage access
• SANs leverage high speed, low latency fibre channel technology
• SANs provide centralized storage management
• SANs offer significantly improved backup and recovery
  

Reasons why SANS are effective

E-business
E-business demands permanent availability of data. 24 x 7 all the time! If your organization is based in New York and one of your clients is in Holland they need to get fast access to their extranet, at a time that suits them. They can't afford to experience web delays because your system is backing up overnight and the LAN is busy. Continuous storage availability is a must. These organizations are finding that SAN-based utilities take traffic off the LAN, reducing downtime and significantly improving network performance.

Demand for data
Companies are insatiable in their appetite for data. This growth is fuelled by increased e-business; greater use of data-intensive applications; more graphical web content; streaming video, audio files and the growth of email applications. More data means more LAN traffic and overall reduced performance.

The cost of storage
The cost of storage is decreasing and technological advances in the capacity of storage devices mean it's much more cost effective to house more data than it ever was in the past. More storage devices mean that IT managers are seeking answers to issues about: heterogeneous access to storage; automatic backup, archiving and recovery; and management control. All of which can be answered with a SAN

Congestion on the LAN
It is estimated that as much as 30% of LAN traffic is backup functions. LANs, already struggling with network traffic will be unable to cope as stored data grows. SANs have a huge ROI by giving back LAN usage and by providing a higher degree of cost-effective availability. For users that have high transaction activity throughout the day, they are looking for LAN-free, or server-less backup, because of the negative impact backups have on LAN performance.

Scalability
In today's business model, organizations cannot wait for existing storage models to be changed to reflect new structures in the organization. They need the flexibility to be able to scale their storage and scale it fast to match the speed of business change, without denying access to their applications while storage capacity is being increased.

Heterogeneous connectivity
As organizations have evolved, they have developed different platforms to suit different areas of the business. Now, as they look to work in a flexible and heterogeneous environment, they are looking to SANs to help them manage their investment, protect their data and help in the consolidation of servers and storage.

Management of Data
The volumes of data being stored are increasing exponentially and much of it is held in distributed and heterogeneous environments. This leads to demands for management and control of this data and these demands will increase as data storage grows. Also, there is a growing shortage of skilled staff in NT and UNIX, and as SANs can help users centrally manage storage, they reduce the need for staff at multiple locations.

Technology Improvements
Five years ago the market could reasonably argue that SANs were a good idea but not technically viable. Now, with the improvements in fibre technologies, SANs are becoming a common requirement on RFPs.

High Availability and Disaster Tolerance
SANs help to make sure that fall-back scenarios exist for critical application servers. SANs provide a higher degree of disaster tolerance and another level of security. Having data replicated between sites ensures faster recovery in the event that one site fails.

Increasing distance between servers and storage
SANs are implemented over a fibre network, providing the foundation for data replication over distances. Distances of 10km and beyond are common and with technology like Nortel's OPTera, it is theoretically possible to extend to 120km.

Benefits of SANs

Improved LAN performance
LANs are like highways - they are great when the traffic is light. As the traffic slowly increases, LAN performance becomes patchy and, eventually, slows to the point where users start to complain and network management functions take too long. By moving storage on to its own network, the LAN is suddenly freed up of a significant part of its traffic. It's like moving all the commercial trucks off the highways and putting them on their own network. This currently only applies to LAN-based backup. There are, and will continue to be, very valid reasons for accessing file shares via LANs.

Improved Back up and recovery times
With the huge amounts of data being cycled through organizations there is a correspondingly huge number of backups to be done. Traditionally, these are done in windows when the LAN is not busy such as overnight or at the weekend. But some companies are finding that even these quieter periods are not sufficient as the LAN is needed 24 hours a day as people in different time zones work on international projects. For one international telecommunications company we were able to reduce their backup times, through the implementation of a SAN, by 33%. So, not only were they able to do backups more quickly, but also regular network users were able to continue working with no degradation in performance.

Better Disaster Tolerance
Organizations always have to be conscious about potential disasters. With the growth of e-business applications the IT infrastructure is being looked on not as a cost but as an essential investment. Without a viable network that gives users timely access to information the company can suffer huge losses. One of our customers cost their developers at $1000 per hour and they have 1,000 of them. So they cost network downtime at $1m per hour! Not all organizations have such a large cost structure but all feel pain when the network goes down. SANs offer excellent network integrity and allow storage to be distributed over larger distances so backups can easily be kept in a remote area where the chances of a similar disaster occurring at the same time are unlikely.

Simplified SAN Management and reduced costs of SAN management
Managing heterogeneous networks over multiple locations causes headaches, grey hair and loss of sleep. It's hard work and it's one more stress in an IT person's already stressed life. SAN Management and Storage Virtualization solutions are now emerging to offer easier control and reduced costs of management, as fewer resources are needed. That way resource can be deployed in areas where they can further enhance the value of the organization.

Information availability across the enterprise
Information is the lifeblood of an organization. It needs to be made available to the people that need it, it needs to be delivered in a timely fashion and it needs to be secure. Organizations quickly lose their competitive advantage if they can't get access to their information. SANs offer improved and more flexible access to information across the organization. With improvements in long distance deployment, SANs can also offer fast information availability across multiple locations.

Confidence in the corporate data management system
All IT people can see where the data requirements of most organizations are heading. Through the roof! Networks that were built with an expectation of 500 gigabytes in two years are now expected to grow exponentially, by terabytes, in months. This is especially true for companies in e-business, where exponential growth is rampant, as well as for companies in mergers and acquisitions. IT departments can't stand in the way of the company's growth - they have to enable the network to grow so that it's invisible to its users. SANs offer a clear and easy growth path that allows organizations to scale their storage, minimizing pain for users and IT personnel, without breaking the bank.

A more responsive and robust system
If information is the lifeblood of the organization then it's critical that the system that supplies that information is responsive to users needs, and robust so that it does not suffer downtime. SANs offer the perfect solution - high-speed access to storage. By moving backup traffic off the LAN the responsiveness of the existing system is greatly improved and by building a separate network the integrity and robustness of the system is increased.

A viable method of providing highly available, high performance storage
Where do you store all the data that companies are generating? It needs to be highly available and have no performance issues. SANs facilitate more cost-effective and cleaner High Availability configurations than normal LAN architectures and offer great performance. High Availability also strongly applies to any mission critical application, which are facilitated by SANs.

A scalable infrastructure
Kanatek does not recommend that organizations abandon their entire infrastructures and implement a SAN in a "big bang" approach. The beauty of SANs is that they are scalable and take account of the existing investments. Kanatek recommends a gradual approach to an investment in a SAN - pick an area where there is a storage problem or a group that has backup issues. From there, SANs offer smooth scalability, a platform for future applications, and Fibre Channel to maximize the growth path.

Better use of resources
Many organizations are unsure how much of their storage is under-utilized or whether all servers are being backed up in a timely fashion, or at all. SANs offer better use of what becomes shared resource - for example tape drive sharing makes better use of tape resources - and therefore a better return on investment.