What is SAN

Storage Area Network, SAN is a block level data storage which enables the communications between
initiators and targets over fiber channel network using FC protocols.

What is NAS

Network Attached Storage, NAS is a file level data storage which provides shared data access to multiple
group of servers using TCP|IP protocols.

What is DAS

DAS is a Direct Attached Storage, where the servers will directly get connected to the storage array. This is
a traditional way of implementing SAN.

What is the hard disk architecture

Hard disks are secondary storage devices we can use to store data. Most modern
computers use hard disks to store large amounts of data.

The architecture of a hard disk consists of several physical components that include:

 Platters
 Spindle
 Read|write heads
 Tracks
 Sectors
Platters
Hard disks are organized as a concentric stack of disks. An individual disk is referred to
as a platter.

Each platter consists of two surfaces: a lower and an upper surface.

Spindle
The platters within the hard disk are connected by a spindle that runs through the
middle of the platters.

The spindle moves in a unidirectional manner along its axis (either clockwise or
counterclockwise).

The movement of the spindle causes the platters to rotate as well.

Read|write head
Each surface on a platter contains a read|write head that is used to read or write data
onto the disk.

The read|write heads can move back and forth along the surface of a platter. Read|write
heads are in turn connected to a single actuator arm.

Tracks
Each surface of a platter consists of a fixed number of tracks. These are circular areas on
the surface of a platter that decrease in circumference as we move towards the center of
the platter.

Data is first written to the outermost track.

Sectors
Each track is divided into a fixed number of sectors. Sectors divide track sections and
store data.
DISK TECHNOLOGIES
IDE, SATA, SCSI, SAS, FC, SSD HARD DISK TYPES

IDE | ATA

================

IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics), originally meant to refer to the hard disk drive that integrates the

controller and the disk body, is a hard disk transmission interface. There is another name called ATA

(Advanced Technology Attachment), which refers to the same thing.

SATA disk

==================

SATA (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment) port hard disk is also called serial hard disk. SATA is

named after its serial data transmission method. In the process of data transmission, the data line and

the signal line are used independently, and the transmission clock frequency remains independent, so

compared with the previous PATA, the transmission rate of SATA can reach 30 times that of parallel . It

can be said that SATA technology is not an improvement of PATA technology in a simple sense, but a

brand new bus

SCSI disk

==================
The English full name of SCSI: Small Computer System Interface. The reason for its appearance is

mainly because the hard disk speed of the original IDE interface is too slow and the transmission rate is

too low, so high-speed SCSI hard disks appear. In fact, SCSI is not specifically designed for hard disks,

in fact it is a bus type interface. Work independently of the system bus.

SAS disk

==================

SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) is serial attached SCSI, which is a new generation of SCSI technology. Like

the popular Serial ATA (SATA) hard drives, they all use serial technology to achieve higher transmission

speeds, and improve internal space by shortening the cable. SAS is a new interface developed after the

parallel SCSI interface. This interface is designed to improve the performance, availability, and

expandability of the storage system, and to provide compatibility with SATA hard drives.

SAS interface technology can be backward compatible with SATA. Specifically, the compatibility of the

two is mainly reflected in the compatibility of the physical layer and the protocol layer.

FC

==================

The English spelling of FC is Fiber Channel. Like the SCIS interface, Fiber Channel was not originally

an interface technology designed and developed for hard disks. It was specifically designed for network

systems. However, as storage systems demand speed, they are gradually applied to hard disk systems.

Fiber Channel hard disks were developed to improve the speed and flexibility of multi-disk storage

systems. Its appearance greatly improves the communication speed of multi-disk systems. It uses fiber

optic cable connections between systems in a point-to-point (or switching) configuration.

SSD|EFD

==================

Solid State Disk (Solid State Disk or Solid State Drive), also known as electronic hard disk or solid state

electronic disk, is a hard disk composed of a control unit and a solid state storage unit (DRAM or FLASH

chip).

Disk Name Speed RPM IOPS

IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics) 2 Gbps 4200 -
ATA (Advanced Technology Attachment)
SATA (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment 4 Gbps 5400|7200 70-100
10k 120-150
FC (Fiber Channel) 4 Gbps 15k 150-200
10k 140-170
SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) 6 Gbps 15k 170-230
EFD(Enterprice Flash Drive) 4|8 Gbps - 2500
SSD(Solid State Drive)

RAID Concept

RAID Levels
Whether hardware or software, RAID is available in different schemes, or RAID levels.
The most commonly levels are RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, and 10. RAID 0,1and 5 work on both
HDD and SSD media. (RAID levels 4 and 6 also work on both media, but are rarely seen
in practice.)

Raid 0: Striping
Requiring a minimum of two disks, RAID 0 splits files and stripes the data across two
disks or more, treating the striped disks as a single partition. Because multiple hard
drives are reading and writing parts of the same file at the same time, throughput is
generally faster.

RAID 0 does not provide redundancy or fault tolerance. Since it treats multiple disks as a
single partition, if even one drive fails, the striped file is unreadable. This is not an
insurmountable problem in video streaming or computer gaming environments where
performance matters the most, and the source file will still exist even if the stream fails. It
is a problem in high availability environments.
RAID 1: Mirroring
RAID 1 requires a minimum of two disks to work, and provides data redundancy and
failover. It reads and writes the exact same data to each disk. Should a mirrored disk fail,
the file exists in its entirety on the functioning disk. Once IT replaces the failed desk, the
RAID system will automatically mirror back to the replacement drive. RAID 1 also
increases read performance.

It does take up more usable capacity on drives, but is an economical failover process on
application servers.

Raid 5: Striping with Parity

This RAID level distributes striping and parity at a block level. Parity is raw binary data.
The RAID system calculates its values to create a parity block, which the system uses to
recover striped data from a failed drive. Most RAID systems with parity functions store
parity blocks on the disks in the array. (Some RAID systems dedicate a disk to parity
calculations, but these are rare.)

RAID 5 stores parity blocks on striped disks. Each stripe has its own dedicated parity
block. RAID 5 can withstand the loss of one disk in the array.
RAID 5 combines the performance of RAID 0 with the redundancy of RAID 1, but takes
up a lot of storage space to do it – about one third of usable capacity.

This level increases write performance since all drives in the array simultaneously serve
write requests. However, overall disk performance can suffer from write amplification,
since even minor changes to the stripes require multiple steps and recalculations.

RAID 6: Striping with double parity

This RAID level operates like RAID 5 with distributed parity and striping. The main
operational difference in RAID 6 is that there is a minimum of four disks in a RAID 6
array, and the system stores an additional parity block on each desk. This enables a
configuration where two disks may fail before the array is unavailable. Its primary usage
case or application servers and large storage arrays.

RAID 6 offers higher redundancy than 5 and increased read performance. It can suffer
from the same server performance overhead with intensive write operations. This
performance hit depends on the RAID system architecture: hardware or software, if it’s
located in firmware, and if the system includes processing software for high-performance
parity calculations.
RAID 10: Striping and Mirroring
RAID 10 requires a minimum of four disks in the array. It stripes across disks for higher
performance, and mirrors for redundancy. In a four-drive array, the system stripes data
to two of the disks. The remaining two disks mirror the striped disks, each one storing
half of the data.

This RAID level serves environments that require both high data security and high
performance, such as high transactional databases that store sensitive information. It is
the most expensive of the RAID levels with lower usable capacity and high system costs.

Different RAID levels exist for different application requirements.

Refer to the following table for the list of RAID modes

 RAID mode Description Operation Advantages Disadvantages Recovery

If one or more
Data is split evenly
Large size and the drives fails, this
RAID 0 Striped disks between two or more No redundancy.
fastest speed. results in array
disks.
failure.

Two or more drives A single drive failure Speed and size is Only one drive is
RAID 1 Mirrored disks have identical data on will not result in data limited by the slowest needed for
them. loss. and smallest disk. recovery.

Data is split evenly

High speeds for Poor performance for
Striped set with between two or more A single drive
RAID 3 sequential read|write multiple simultaneous
dedicated parity disks, plus a dedicated failure will rebuild.
operations. instructions.
drive for parity storage.

Data is split evenly

Striped disks with between three or more Large size, fast speed, The total array size is A single drive
RAID 5
distributed parity disks. Parity is split and redundancy. reduced by parity. failure will rebuild.
between disks.

Larger size and higher

Four or more drives are Only one drive in a
1+0; Striped set of speed than RAID-1,
RAID 10 made into two mirrors No parity. mirrored set can
Mirrored Subset and more redundancy
that are striped. fail.
than RAID-0.

Any number of drives

Hardware RAID may
are accessed Software RAID modes
JBOD Just a Bunch Of Disks have better N|A
independently by the can be used.
performance.
operating system.

Two drives have

identical data, plus one Seamless operation Only one drive is

Spare drive is not
Clone RAID 1 + Spare when one drive fails needed for
drive is used for accessible to the user.
in a RAID-1 array. recovery.
rebuilding in case of a

primary array failure.

FC Layers
What is Fiber Channel

FC (Fiber Channel) is a network technology, predominantly used within storage area networks, to provide
high-speed, loss-less delivery of raw block data between computer data storage and server devices.
 The Fiber Channel network (aka fabric) is a dedicated high-speed, low latency storage network, supporting
bandwidth speeds of 2, 4, 6, 8 and 16Gbps, connecting:

 HBAs (Host Bus Adapter) - Dedicated server storage adapters (aka the Initiator)
 Storage Systems - Contains storage controllers, and disks (aka the target).
 FC Switches - High-speed Fiber Channel switches.

The FCP (Fiber Channel Protocol) operates over the FC fabric. Predominantly FCP is the implementation
of SCSI over an FC network, or in other words, SCSI data is encapsulated and transported within FC frames.

FC Layers

When it comes to learning the various layers of Fiber Channel it is important to understand that FC does not
follow the traditional OSI 7 layer model. Instead, it is broken down into 5 layers. As shown below:

FC-0 - Defines the physical media used to link two Fiber Channel ports, including cabling types, optical and
electrical parameters for a variety of data rates, maximum transfer distances, and noise limits. Fiber Channel
supports two types of cables: Copper and optical.[2]

FC-1 - Defines the transmission protocol including serial encoding and decoding rules, special characters and
error control.[3]

FC-2 - Defines the transport mechanism of Fiber Channel and the framing rules of the data to be transferred
between ports, the different mechanisms for controlling the service of classes and the means of managing the
sequence of a data transfer.[4]

FC-3 - Defines common services required for advanced features such as striping, hunt group, and multicast.

FC-4 - Defines the application interfaces that can execute over Fiber Channel. It specifies the mapping rules
of upper layer protocols using the FC levels below.[5]
 Figure 1: FC Layers

FC Frames
Fiber Channel defines a variable length frame consisting of 36 bytes of overhead and up to 2112 bytes of
payload for a total maximum size of 2148 bytes. A Start of Frame (SOF) delimiter and End of Frame (EOF)
delimiter mark the beginning and end of each Fiber Channel frame.

The CRC is used to detect transmission errors.

Figure 2: FC Layers.[7]

Addressing | Naming
World Wide Names

WWN

FC addressing is based upon WWN (World Wide Names). These addresses are unique to each of the FC
devices (such as an FC HBA or SAN's) and are 64-bit addresses, consisting of 16 x Hexadecimal values, like
so: 15:00:00:f0:8c:08:95:de.

Each device in the SAN is identified by a unique WWN. The WWN contains vendor identifier field, which
is defined and maintained by the IEEE.[8]

The WWN can be compared to a MAC address in the Ethernet world.

WWPN

Whereas the WWN is assigned to the device. The World Wide Port Name's (WWPN) is a unique address
assigned to every port of a node (be it HBA or storage system).

WWNN

The World Wide Node Name (WWNN) is assigned to a node in the storage network. For example, the same
WWNN can represent multiple network interfaces of a single network node.[9]

Aliases

Aliases are used to aid in the configuration and troubleshooting, by mapping the World Wide name (from the
FC switch or storage system) to a string. For example: the WWPN 15:00:00:f0:8c:08:95:de could be aliased to
MAIL-SERVER.

Switch Domain IDs

Within the FC network, each switch is assigned a unique Domain ID. A principle switch is elected within the
network which assigns the Domain IDs to the other switches. This Domain ID is then used to form part of the
FCID, as per the FLOGI process (described later).

FCNS

The Fiber Channel Name Service (FCNS) is used to exchange the FLOGI database, between switches within
the fabric. Allowing each switch to learn where each WWPN is, and how to route traffic there.[10]
Security
Zoning

Zoning is a security feature that allows the administrator to control which hosts can communicate with each
other. This allows the administrator to create zones that prevent servers from communicating with each other
over the fabric, ensuring that each server can only communicate to the storage system.

Figure 3: Zoning.

LUN Masking

LUN masking is used to restrict which LUN is presented to which host or set of hosts. This prevents
unauthorized hosts from accessing LUNs and also prevents situations of data corruption that could occur
should a host access the wrong LUN.

Ports|Links
 Port Types

There are a number of FC port types. Below outlines the main ones:

Port
Port Name Port Description
Type

G_Port Generic This is the port type that all ports first start with, prior to transitioning to another port type.

F_Port Fabric Connects to an N_Port (aka Initiator or Target)

N_Port Node The Initiator or Target. Connects to an F_Port (aka Fabric switch).

E_Port Extension Connects to another fabric switch.

Figure 4: FC Ports.

Link Types

 Inter-Switch Link (ISL) - A connection between two switches.

 Trunk - Allows for multiple ISL's to be bundled together as a single link. Traffic is then distributed
across each of the members. This is synonymous to port-channels in the world of Ethernet.
 Figure 5: FC Links.

Common Services
Login Processes

Fabric Login (FLOGI)

When a device is connected to the fabric, it sends a Fabric Login (FLOGI) request.
The switch assigns a 24-bit FCID address, which is equivalent to an IP address.

The FCID is then used by the FC switches to route traffic across the fabric.

In addition, as part of this process buffer credits are also exchanged with the switch.

Port Login (PLOGI)

Once the FLOGI is complete, the initiator will send the PLOGI request to the switch,
in order to inform the Fabric Name Server (FCNS) of its personality and capabilities.
Such as:

 WWNN, WWPN
 Buffer credits for flow control
 Process Login (PLRI)
The initiator host will send a PLRI request to the storage target. The storage system
will then granted access to the host based on its configured LUN masking.

Topologies
Fiber Channel Topologies
Topology is the way of approach to connect devices to form a network.

Fiber Channel-based networks support three types of base topologies:

 Point-to-point
 Arbitrated loop
 Switched fabric
Switched fabric further classified into few more topologies

 Traditional topologies
 Single switch
 Cascading|ring topology
 Mesh topology
 Tiered topologies
 Core edge topology
 Edge core edge topology
FC SAN topologies are illustrated in below diagram