Introduction to Storage Networking The New Datacenter
Rack-Optimized Servers
• Rack-optimized form factor is designed for: – Small footprint – High-density datacenters – Quick and flexible deployment – Centralized management
• SANs allow maximum flexibility in deployment of computing resources: – Shared storage – Logical storage consolidation
– Independent scalability of servers and storage
FC switch Server Server Server Server
Storage Storage
Rack-optimized server architectures are helping to drive the move to SANs: Rack-optimized servers implement a “modular” architecture that allows higher densities and more flexible deployment. Rack-optimized servers typically contain only a few internal disk drive slots. Storage is provided by external JBOD or RAID units. Computing power can be scaled by adding more rack servers, and storage can be scaled by adding more external storage.
This architecture is a good match for SANs because: SANs allow multiple servers to access the same storage devices. SAN storage consolidation applications allow multiple rack-optimized storage units to be aggregated into larger logical storage pools. SANs allow servers and storage to scale independently.