The Move to Storage Networks
The initial evaluation and deployment of SAN technology began in 2001 as point solutions for environments that the director of technical services and his team determined had inordinately low disk utilization rates.Early evaluations of SAN technology made the team hopeful for the benefits of increased utilization and availability; however, the team was skeptical of the technology's capability to deliver on its promises. Initial cost-benefit analyses showed the potential for an early uptick in support costs and management inefficiencies after accounting for a steep learning curve and the interoperability issues endemic in what was then a relatively immature industry. Although initial pre-deployment data supported fears of higher costs, the team was not deterred from deploying SANs, although they did adopt a "wait-and-see" attitude as the first rollouts were completed.The first storage network to be deployed was a dual-fabric SAN built on two 32-port fixed Brocade Fibre Channel (FC) switches, supporting a backup environment. This SAN was designed to move backup traffic off of the IP backbone and onto the FC network, thereby lessening the impact on the IP network and increasing backup performance.Four more SAN islands were deployed between 2001 and 2003, but as these SAN islands became more prevalent, one fact became glaringly obvious: