SAN

By using the speed of Fibre Channel, a Storage Area Network (SAN) can provide a high bandwidth solution. Since Fibre Channel makes use of the SCSI protocol, it maintains excellent compatibility. It can be used to provide shared storage across a LAN or WAN or to provide fast networking for a Beowulf Cluster.

Originally designed to operate at 1 Gbps, Fibre Channel now can run at speeds of 2 Gbps providing 200MB of bandwidth. With the use of such hardware as hubs and switches, a Storage Area Network could consist of thousands of Computers and thousands of storage nodes.

Generally when using a SAN, you will need to ensure that the data being accessed by multiple systems is managed in such a way as to prevent corruption. This can be done by using different partitions for different machines, using only ready-only access to the volumes or by using a shared disk filesystem such as the Global Filesystem (GFS).

GFS is a Linux based multisystem journaling filesystem that controls the reading and writing to a shared device in such a way as to prevent the multiple systems from corrupting the data on the volume. Each Client is equal and it does not require a dedicated server to manage the filesystem.