By Lee Johns 

Is the SAN Dead?

Well what do you know. A well respected analyst has had the courage to write a paper entitled "Do you really need a SAN anymore?". In his paper Andrew Reichman of Forrester postulates that the promise of the SAN has not been realised and that application centric storage based on industry standard platforms and alternate interconnects like iSCSI, SAS and infiniband may offer a better return.

So is the SAN dead. The simple answer is no. Fibre Channel SANs will continue to be the predominant platforms for storage over the next few years. However there is real merit in Andrew Reichman's hypothesis.

I am a Zoologist. Yes I admit it. I have an "ology". I don't apply the knowledge I gained from zoology everyday in my job in the computer industry but occasionally I do and one of the things that zoology taught me is that evolution comes in leaps. When the climate changes dramatically it does not suddenly result in mutations that lead the next generations. Those mutations already exist, and the change in climate just means their adaptions (which may previously have been a weakness) make them more competitive than they were.

We are currently going through one of these "Climate Changes" with the turmoil in the financial markets. IT managers are looking for alternatives and they are out there. The HP Oracle Exadata Database Machine (Leverages infiniband), The HP Extreme Data Storage System (SAS), alternate SAN technologies like LeftHand Networks an HP company (iSCSI) and new SAS connected solutions including HP's direct connect storage for HP BladeSystem.

Anyone want to make a guess as to who is most ready to capitalize on this new shift in storage power? Andrew Reichman makes some suggestions and HP is on his list of the best prepared and most likely to embrace. He does not say it quite like a Zoologist would however. As every zoolologist knows The Dinosaurs never saw that meteorite coming.

If you liked this article you might also like the read the following (these are all links):-

• HP BladeSystem and StorageWorks Synergy
• Details on new Oracle Exadata Storage Server by HP
• Top Ten Reasons Why DAS Will Grow!
• Storage Just got SASsy! VMware set free of the SAN

And for those of you who don't believe I'm a zoologist:-

http://h30431.www3.hp.com/?fr_story=48087e34d302151d43a00ab35c025f555c2d375c&rf=bm