Ulf Troppens & Rainer Erkens 
Storage Networks Explained 
Basics and Application of Fibre Channel SAN, NAS, iSCSI, InfiniBand and FCoE

All you need to know about Storage Area Networks

The amount of data of an average company doubles every year. Thus, companies who own 1TB of data today will own 32TB in five years. Storage networks help to tame such data quantities and to manage this data growth efficiently. Since stored data and information are the biggest asset of any company, anyone who is involved in the planning or the operation of IT systems requires a basic knowledge of the principle and the use of storage networks.

Storage Networks Explained covers the fundaments, techniques and functions of storage networks such as disk subsystems, Fibre Channel SAN, Internet SCSI (i SCSI), Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCo E), Network Attached Storage (NAS), file systems, and storage virtualization. Furthermore the authors describe the use of these techniques and how they are designed to achieve high-availability, flexibility, and scalability of data and applications. Additional attention is given to network backup and the management of storage networks. Written by leading experts in the field, this book on storage area networks is updated and fully revised.

Key features:

* Presents the basic concepts of storage networks, such as I/O techniques, disk subsystems, virtualization, NAS and SAN file systems

* Covers the design of storage networks which provide flexible, highly-available, and scaleable IT systems

* Explains the use of storage networks for data sharing, data protection, and digital archiving

* Discusses management of storage networks using SNMP, SMI-S, and IEEE 1244

This book provides system administrators and system architects, as well as students and decision makers, with the tools needed for optimal selection and cost-effective use of storage networks.

The Linux Journal awarded the first edition with the ‘Editor’s Choice Award 2005’ in the category ‘System Administration Book.’

About the author

The authors are employed at IBM’s storage competence center
in Mainz, Germany. They work at the interface between technology
and customers. Their duties cover a wide field of responsibilities.
They develop and test new software for storage networks. They
present the latest hardware and software products in the field of
storage networks to customers and explain their underlying
concepts. Last but not least they deploy and support respective
hardware and software in customer environments.

Ulf Troppens (centre) studied Computer Science at the
University of Karlsruhe. Since 1989 he has been primarily involved
in the development and administration of Unix systems, storage
systems, data and storage networks and distributed
applications.

Rainer Erkens (left) studied Mathematics at the University
of Mainz. His experience in the management of computers and
distributed applications goes back to 1992. Since 2005 he is a
technical support manager in IBM’s European Storage
Competence Center.

Wolfgang M¨ uller-Friedt (right) studied Computer
Science at the FH Darmstadt. He is a software architect focussing
on the software development of management applications for storage
networks which support open standards such as SMI-S and IEEE
1244.

Nils Haustein (left front) studied Electrical Engineering at
the TU Chemnitz. For several years he is with IBM’s advanced
technical sales support in Europe where he is focussing on digital
archiving.

Rainer Wolafka (right front) studied Electrical Engineering
at the FH Frankfurt and Software Engineering at the Santa Clara
University. Since 1997 he is working in the field of storage
networks and the software development of management applications
for storage networks.