SAN Services

Storage Area Networking, Planning, Installation, and Integration

SAN storage virtualization technology leads the explosive growth of storage network products. SAN systems seek to:

handle the explosive data growth through the easy capacity and performance
simplify the scaling of storage,
provide deployment flexibility, regardless of application
separate the storage and server purchase decision,
enable the high availability of information and tolerance of both manmade and natural disasters
simplify centralized management of storage resources
provide possibilities for data sharing between servers with secure locking

SANs are made up of servers, hubs, switches and storage devices that are connected together, and provide a common storage pool. This common storage pool allows unused capacity to be dynamically allocated to the applications and systems where they are needed. Storage virtualization reduces storage costs and complexity while improving your business process. New applications, capacity and storage devices can be added with little or no downtime, increasing availability of your data.

SANs used to be cost prohibitive, but not anymore. In the early days of SANs, FC and FC-AL (Fibre Channel and Fibre Channel arbitrated loop, respectively) were the only protocols that support SAN systems, suited mainly for high-end databases and server clusters. Fibre channel is still expensive (and should be, with 1-4Gbps throughput), and requires the use of host-bus-adapters and fibre switches, but there are many other options out there. iSCSI, SATA, and IP SAN technology provide low-cost SAN options for small to midrange enterprises.

This decreased cost of acquisition, combined with simplified infrastructure requiring less maintenance and management costs, makes SANs perfect for storage applications like:

shared RAID storage across application for ease of management and decrease of downtime
high availability clustered storage with auto-failover of resources
server-free backup/restore applications that archives data directly from disk to tape, optical or other archival systems
LAN-free backup and restore applications that eases the load of your existing LAN or WAN

Want to know more? Want to set up an appointment to speak to one of our storage solution specialists, providing you with vendor-neutral advice on what's best for your business requirements? Email us today at sales@nasi.com.

At North American Systems, we have over fifteen years selling, implementing, installing, and integrating SAN filesystems into many IT infrastructures. We are constantly on the cutting edge of the networked storage loop, qualified to provide you with the latest and greatest, current and upcoming storage technologies. Our third-party status ensures you will receive unbiased opinions and information when it comes to SAN hardware, software, and maintenance solutions.

:: North American Systems International ::
:: 2901 E 78^th Street :: Bloomington, MN 55425 ::
:: sales@nasi.com :: 800-927-7474 ::