Storage Area Networks or SAN storage solutions, once made sense for large organizations only that had many resources to deploy and maintain these complex systems, plus the costs were very high. This is not the case anymore as prices have decreased and SAN storage systems are also offered in less complex configurations as well.
This new addition or revamp of SAN storage systems make sense to Small to Medium-sized Businesses (SMBs) too now, especially to those SMBs that manage large amounts of data or that run applications with high-performance requirements.
SAN Storage Offers High Performance
SAN storage systems offer much better performance than any other conventional system. In fact, SAN storage offers even better performance than NAS storage, a budget storage option that most SMBs use.
This is because SAN storage solutions are usually based on Fibre Channel (FC) or iSCSI (iSCSI storage) infrastructure, which offer high throughputs and really low latency. As of now, the FC interface can support speeds up to 128 Gbps and it will only go faster. However, iSCSI storage isn’t far behind either. This makes SAN storage solutions high performance storage solutions, no matter which infrastructure is used.
SAN Storage Offers Unmatched Scalability
Scalability is one of the basic considerations for every business, even SMBs. They need a solution that is scalable so that it can handle the future needs and requirements of the business.
SAN storage systems are very scalable. They allow businesses to easily add more storage capacity or even performance to match their needs. SMBs would be thrilled to know that SAN storage solutions can now scale to thousands of disks but SMBs will likely need far less than this, however, it is a good thing that it can scale to far more than needed.
SAN Storage Solutions are Reliable
Reliability is the main concern of every business, whether it is big or small. There is no point in investing in a storage solution if it is not reliable. SAN storage solutions are very much reliable. They are made up of computers and storage devices that are interconnected by multiple switches.
SAN storage systems are designed for critical workloads and have multiple redundancy levels, failover capabilities. This means that SAN storage systems are highly available and can automatically reroute traffic to avoid disruptions.
To Sum Up
The storage needs of SMBs have increased and they now need a storage solution that can match those needs and offer high performance along with other features. SAN storage solutions were the obvious candidate to this use case but they were too costly for SMBs to pursue them.
Nowadays, SAN storage solutions have become much cheaper which makes them a very attractive storage option for SMBs. They offer high-performance, easy scalability, high availably and much more benefits which is why it makes absolute sense for SMBs to invest in them.
