SAN (storage area network) storage provides a high level of data functionality for storage and its protection. If you think a SAN is just for simple storage requirements, then you couldn’t be more off the mark! 

Today’s SAN storage solutions are cloud-enabled with scalable storage capacity, flash-integrated, and functional with boosted data management capabilities. In highlighting key areas of virtualization, databases, VDI, and analytics and data backup, SAN offers the basis for an efficient, flexible modern data storage centre.

Here are nine SAN storage use cases that are not so obvious after the initial implementation of the SAN solution.

1. Virtual Server Infrastructure

In general for running virtual machines and serving, SAN is perfect for offering shared storage across multiple hosts. Since SAN storage appears to servers as directly attached disks but can be shared between physical hosts, it enables key virtualization capabilities.

Using SAN, you also do not have to have your storage capacity in various isolated subsystems, but you can consolidate all your storage capacity in one central and easily managed storage system. Storage area network-based shared storage is generally more manageable than direct-attached virtual server infrastructure.

2. Disk-to-Disk Backup

Conventional tapes consume time and human effort and are often unreliable for major restorations, as discussed below. SAN also makes disk-to-disk backups that enable faster, more reliable back and forth and also restoration.

SAN storage allows your backup application to have disk target at high speed for backup purposes. They are also much faster on disk than searching for the right tapes. Other similar features that are integrated into the SAN arrays include the ability to take a snapshot and clone the entire data set.

3. Big Data Analytics

Infrastructure, such as storage behind big data analytics workloads, must be strong enough. SAN provides the high capacity and throughput required for data ingestion and the processing of petabytes of data. It also allows multiple clusters of analytics servers to use common data sets on shared storage, which is highly valuable for performance and scalability.

4. Database Applications

Whether it is MS-SQL, Oracle, Postgres, MySQL, or other open-source database systems, agile and performant shared storage is paramount. Similar to the case with analytics apps, databases are very demanding in terms of the storage system, especially in terms of capacity, throughput, and latency.

All-flash SAN helps meet database workload by offering the fastest SSD performance on microsecond latency. Consolidating databases on a shared SAN also helps in easy management of the databases, including cloning for test and development purposes and disaster recovery.

5. Server Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)

Another technology used to support the centralised management of the desktop is virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), where the desktop operating systems are hosted on the server. However, the earliest forms of VDI integration, Lefebvre, utilised the direct-attached storage capabilities, which presented certain constraints in terms of capacity and scope.

By implementing SAN storage behind your VDI servers, you can handle these issues. It helps in maintaining the servers used in VDI to have access to the same pool from which all the data related to virtual desktops is stored. This makes it easier to come up with additional desktops without the need to expand the storage extensively.

6. Electronic Health Records

Electronic health and medical records remain standard in the healthcare industry at the present time. This information is useful in all aspects of the patient’s care, health compliance and the general day-to-day running of the medical centre.

But even today, a significant number of hospitals rely on such infrastructures like NAS or direct-attached storage, which in fact do not have enterprise-level reliability and data management. 

Through the implementation of a single copy of enterprise SAN storage for electronic health records, hospitals can avail themselves of seamless availability, improved performance, instant duplication, and comprehensive protection.

7. Server Consolidation

The problem of server sprawl continues to persist as a major concern in most data centres. Nevertheless, storage can still limit consolidation even with virtualization; P2V procedures are particularly challenging because of direct-attached storage.

This will not only allow a shared SAN storage pool where data can be moved from physical servers to virtual machines. The created virtual servers can connect to the same LUNs and data as the physical servers without the P2V process. This means that physical server consolidation is made easier, thereby removing the need for upstream storage migration.

8. Cloud Storage Gateways

More and more organisations entrust the public cloud with storage space, archive servers, and, in many cases, operational servers. 

• However, data transfer to the cloud can be challenging when considering issues such as bandwidths, security measures, and data gravity.

• To achieve this, storage appliances known as cloud gateways make it easy to integrate on-premise SAN infrastructure with public cloud-based storage. 

• It also has the effect of minimising latency since locally cached data is retrieved faster as compared to if it were to be fetched from a remote server.

• Cloud gateways provide a powerful solution for organisations looking to move their data to the public cloud. 

• They address bandwidth, security, and data gravity concerns while optimising data transfer and reducing latency. 

This makes it easier for organisations to adopt a hybrid cloud approach and take advantage of the benefits of both on-premises and cloud storage.

9. Containerized Applications

Modern microservice architecture for applications relies on containers such as Docker and Kubernetes for dynamism and expandability. Containers build apps along with the libraries necessary for the execution of those apps for the purpose of simple deployment on both on-premises and cloud networks.

However, two evils still accompany direct-attached storage: container persistence and data sharing. In this case, by utilising high-performance SAN storage for the containers, all nodes in the cluster will be able to use the same volumes. This helps to support stateful containerized applications.

Conclusion

In the current day where IT is highly virtualized, data-centric, and cloud-oriented, shared SAN storage offers distinct advantages over direct-attached storage. Performance, availability, scalability, and data protection—they are all achievable and come as a package with SAN.

Therefore, do not limit SAN to a specific purpose. Think about the specific ways in which SAN storage can offer the second generation of storage services for your other information technology infrastructure projects. It is now evident that the capabilities are indeed stunning, and the advantages are quite evident.