SAN Basics Made Easy

HBA - Host bus adapter. Every host server should have HBA (It is like NIC) to get connect to SAN storage. It basically converts digital signals in to optical signals.

HBA driver - It’s like NIC Device driver. Should be installed on the host server.

Fabric- It’s a fiber optic cable connects sever to a SAN switch and SAN switch to SAN Storage array.
Cable Connectors are
If its Optical :SC,LC and MJ-RJ (Small Form Factor Pluggable)
If its Copper:DB-9,HSSDC

SAN Switch- This is the middle man between host servers and SAN Storage array.
There are 16, 24, 32 port switches know as Modular switches.
There are 64,128 port switches known as director-class switches.


SAN Storage array - This equipment has got Arrays of disks/Tapes/Raid in it.
There is a Storage Processor on the SAN Storage array.

Storage Processor - It connects SAN Storage array to the SAN switch through fabric.

FC protocol – It is a communication protocol used between SAN Storage array, Switches and Host server.

Disk arrays – These are groups of multiple disk devices.

RAID -Using specialized algorithms several disk drives are grouped to provide common pooled storage on SAN Storage Array.

LUN – It is a single unit of storage on Array. It could be a single RAID group/Volume or logical Drive. A RAID can have multiple LUN.

Snapshot - It is a point in time copy of a LUN.

Internal copies – It allows data movement from one LUN to another for an additional copy for testing.

Remote mirroring - It provides constant synchronization between LUNs on one
Storage array and another remote storage array.