A SAN is a storage networking architecture that allows for more efficient use of storage capacity by offloading storage from the LAN to a dedicated storage network. This impacts a number of applications, including highly available configurations such as databases, Web farms, workflow applications with large files, and off-host backups running on separate servers. Multiple servers mount and access the same file system on shared media, with no required modifications to existing applications. File system integrity in a shared environment. Controls access to the file system structure using a global lock manager, and manages cache coherence and locking.
Systems accessing shared file systems always see the same information.
Fast failover for high availability environments. Clusterwide management of SAN data. Allows clusterwide logical device naming and volume and file system operations. The suite works at the server level in clustering groups. Clustering consists of servers connected to the same storage devices, accessible by the same clients, and coordinated by a cluster server application.