Direct contributes increased scalability,enhanced manageability, and maximized performance to the Windows 2000 network. It helps to reduce the total cost of ownership by allowing administrators to consolidate storage while maintaining the ability of each node to directly read and write data residing on shared storage. Direct is an ideal solution for data and storage intensive operations, such as multimedia editing, publishing and pre-press, CAD and CAM shops, and similarly loaded workgroup computing environments. Direct delivers data directly to each of the HTTP servers at the speed of hard disks and the SAN, entirely eliminating the file server as a bottleneck for data delivery. By consolidating the storage in a centralized shared location, SANPoint Direct improves system manageability and reduces the total cost of storage and data storage management.
Direct cluster consists of a server node and one or more client nodes.
The master node arbitrates the metadata operations such as file open. Direct separates the data transfer from the metadata operations. Once a client has been granted, for example, read access to a file, that client also obtains the disk addresses for the file blocks from the server. The client then reads the disk blocks directly over the SAN, bypassing both the server and the local area network. Server and local area network become more scalable.