First, Fibre Channel can quickly move large chunks of data among storage devices due to great bandwidth. Another advantage of Fibre Channel is that it supports increased physical distance, meaning that storage devices can be located throughout an enterprise. The servers may be in one room and the storage devices in another room, on a different floor, or in a separate building. Fibre Channel can also send and receive data concurrently. This is key because of the increasing amounts of data being collected by enterprises and the increasing demands on businesses to use information to create competitive advantage.
SANs allow data to be centralized and shared among various servers throughout an enterprise.
The loss of critical data can cripple a company's ability to operate effectively. Fortunately, SANs can create real-time mirroring, or multiple data copies, to protect information. The implementation of SANs is no slam-dunk, however. There can be disadvantages to using them. While benefits such as speed and data protection make SANs attractive, a lack of standards and other issues have slowed SAN adoption.