>> In our next section, we're going to
take a look at network storage.
Big reason that we network is because we have
data and information that we want to share.
There are lots of different ways that we share data.
Traditionally, we've had a file servers on our network.
Those are basic computer systems that we've had
the sole purpose of storing
files and serving those files.
But now as we move forward,
we find that we have so much information
that we're managing today that we've
really outgrown the typical hard drive
on the file server and we need something more,
so we have network attached storage.
This is one method of increasing
your storage space on the network.
Basically, this is just a storage of clients.
It's just like a hard drive on steroids, if you will.
It's going to provide file level storage and it's
accessible on the network using some network protocols.
Specifically, things like SMB,
which stands for Server Messaging Blocks,
and NFS, which is Network Filing System.
Those are some protocols that would allow
the access of those particular files.
An alternative to network
attached storage is to have a Storage Area Network.
See you've got a NAS and you've got a SAN.
But with SAN,
you have a specific network designated to
store data and you're accessing that data,
usually across a high speed connection.
You've got the host layer,
which are the individual systems on your network PCs,
the systems that have the data to store.
Then you have what's called the fabric layer,
which is the media across which the data travels.
Then you have the storage layer,
which is whatever your storage devices
are in that specific network.
How do we connect to the SAN?
Well, it has to be
high speed connectivity of some form or fashion.
There's something called a Fiber Channel over Ethernet.
That ultimately is going to use fiber channel switches.
That's specifically a Layer 3 switch that's
compatible within a fiber channel environment.
Ultimately, what we're looking at in this section
is a pretty high speed solution
when looking at a fiber channel.
It's about 1,010 gigabits per
second and we're seeing even more of that today.
You can see some of these elements
or we've had the initiator connecting
through the switch to the actual
storage area network on the backend.
There's also an alternative to connect to
a storage area network across an iSCSI environment.
Back in the day, we used to talk a lot
about iSCSI hard drives,
small computer systems interface.
In our servers, we would have iSCSI devices
>> because iSCSI provided faster access and there was
>> a lot more functionality with the iSCSI system.
Now what we're doing is taking an extension of that.
The benefit of a iSCSI environment is you'll
notice I'm not using anything with a fiber channel.
I'm able to take advantage and to
leverage my existing network infrastructure.
Where I'm storing my data is on
the backend on my iSCSI target area.
We refer to those spaces or
specific storage locations biological unit number.
Ultimately, that's a pointer that points
to a specific location on the SAN network.
We do that to obfuscate to someone on the outside
>> where specifically the data is being stored,
>> so that LUN is used to prevent too much information
>> being disclosed and being available.
>> Now, InfiniBand is
a relatively new communication standard.
This is for very high performance environments
where we want next to no latency.
Ultimately, this is going to be
in a specific switch network.
This can be connected to
a SAN to provide even greater speed.
This is just one of those new technologies.
Also to connect to SAN,
we might be using the idea of jumbo frames,
which means we have an environment where
some more information can be
combined into a single frame.
That means we'll get
much better performance rather than having lots of
little frames and being able to
transmit more information in a single frame.
Just to wrap up with network storage,
network attached storage devices
are storage appliances on the network,
>> whereas a storage area network is offsite
>> or at least on a segmented network
that you can access either through
Fiber Channel over Ethernet or iSCSI technology.
InfiniBand can also be a solution for
high-speed access for storage area networks.
Another means of providing
quick access is through the use of jumbo frames.