The rapid growth of e-commerce and citizen services applications in the federal government has placed an even greater stress on existing storage solutions. A SAN includes a system of servers, adapters, external storage devices, hubs, switches as well as network and storage management tools. With a SAN, the information belongs to the enterprise rather than to a server. This enables the customer to use those network devices that work the best for the enterprise. In a SAN environment, storage management can be scaled to rapidly accommodate changes in server and storage configurations, and storage system selection is based solely on storage needs.
SANs provide data-intensive storage solutions without affecting network operations.
The servers are connected to data repositories at gigabit speeds to provide a single point of storage accessed by multiple servers of all types, including Windows NT, Unix even mainframe computers. Interoperability of the platform is key to this growth. Among other things, SANs can keep information available to other systems even if a server connected to the Internet crashes. The fact that it enables data sharing will also help make pervasive or ubiquitous computing a reality, in which all types of devices connect to information housed in SANs.