Essential Guide to Computer Data Storage: From Floppy to DVD, The

Storage Networking

Introduction

With a continuously increasing demand for data storage, the following key issues have to be addressed to have a successful storage solution:

• Scalability, or ability to increase storage capacity, performance, and so on, without increasing complexity of the system

• Heterogeneous connectivity, or an ability to operate in the mixed environment of different operating systems, such as Unix, Windows NT, and so on

• High performance

• High data availability, which is achieved via data redundancy

• Information sharing, or data transparency throughout the entire network

• Ease of use (out-of-the-box operation, plug-and-play, hot-swapping, etc.)

• Ease of management, including operation, maintenance, backup, monitoring, and so on

• Low total ...