Practical Storage Area Networking

It wasn't that long ago that hard disk space was measured in megabytes and RAM in kilobytes. Today's storage systems routinely surpass the terabyte (about 1 million megabytes) level, and sometimes reach the petabyte (1,024 terabytes). High-end systems often have a gigabyte (1,024 megabytes) or more of RAM. With storage space becoming less of an issue, the technological challenge becomes making vast amounts of data easily available and accessible. One of today's hottest storage technologies is called storage area network (SAN). A SAN essentially enables a single data store to be available to many different hosts. Thus, it becomes much easier to make large amounts of data available. But that's not the end of the story; the challenge then becomes making the data accessible to those who need it. In fewer than 200 pages, Practical Storage Area Networking provides an excellent overview into SANs, from initial design and integration to maintenance and data security. All processes involved in a SAN project, including capacity planning, component selection, and storage sizing, are helpfully reviewed. While SANs have their uses, security remains a problem. The author is honest enough to note that SANs have a ways to go to be truly secure. For those who need a quick overview on SANs, this is an advisable choice.

There's simply not a lot of books on this topic out there. It is clear the author put a lot of time into his presentation of the material. The review above does not do this book justice - I laughed, I cried, I couldn't put it down and I'm awaiting the sequel! :-)