Server Centric IT Architecture and its Limitations; Storage – Centric IT Architecture and its advantages; Case study: Replacing a server with Storage Networks; The Data Storage and Data Access problem; The Battle for size and access.
Architecture of Intelligent Disk Subsystems; Hard disks and Internal I/O Channels, JBOD, Storage virtualization using RAID and different RAID levels;
Caching: Acceleration of Hard Disk Access; Intelligent disk subsystems; Availability of disk subsystems. The Physical I/O path from the CPU to the Storage System; SCSI.
Fibre Channel Protocol Stack; Fibre Channel SAN; IP Storage. The NAS Architecture, The NAS hardware Architecture, The NAS Software Architecture, Network connectivity, NAS as a storage system.
Local File Systems; Network file Systems and file servers; Shared Disk file systems; Comparison of fibre Channel and NAS.
Definition of Storage virtualization; Implementation Considerations; Storage virtualization on Block or file level; Storage virtualization on various levels of the storage Network; Symmetric and Asymmetric storage virtualization in the Network
Overview, creating a Network for storage; SAN Hardware devices, The fibre channel switch, Host Bus adaptors; Putting the storage in SAN; Fabric operation from a Hardware perspective.
The switch’s Operating system, Device Drivers, The Supporting the switch’s components, Configuration options for SANs. Panning for business continuity.