Welcome to Introduction to storage networks. Storage of your organization's data is critical to its business operations. Every day, users access, modify and share data that enables the organization to function. However, data storage can quickly become unmanageable when storage capacity must increase to accommodate the vast quantities of information created daily and stored for months or years. This class explains how to investigate your organization's storage needs and evaluate storage technologies to determine which best fits your requirements.

This class is geared toward IT personnel who are responsible for network storage planning for small and medium-size businesses (SMBs).

One solution to meeting data storage needs is using a storage area network (SAN)—a centrally consolidated, virtual disk storage system that's separate from network traffic and shared by servers.

What you'll learn

The lessons in this class are designed to build on one another and give you practical information to help you make informed decisions when planning your network storage. Here's what the lessons cover:

• Lesson 1: Is a storage area network right for your organization? covers options in storage technologies, explains how SANs can benefit your organization and gives you an overview of assessing your current and future storage needs.
• Lesson 2: Exploring virtual storage answers the question "What is virtual storage?" You delve into the components and capabilities of the SAN infrastructure, including virtualizing and migrating your data.
• Lesson 3: Understanding SAN disk solutions explains how you can use SAN disk components to set up virtual storage solutions while considering performance and redundancy factors.
• Lesson 4: Discovering SAN controllers, cables and connectors covers the network components—controllers, cables and connection technologies—that enable SANs to move data from disk to server.
• Lesson 5: Exploring topologies and switches describes the SAN switch protocol for interconnecting servers and disk arrays, which provides the expansion and management capabilities that make a SAN infrastructure such a huge advantage for your organization.
• Lesson 6: Managing and administering SAN software covers storage area network management and describes techniques for administering your SAN, such as using device zones and SAN utilities.

Each lesson includes an assignment to help you to apply the concepts to your organization as well as a short quiz to check your comprehension of the topics. Along the way, you can interact with other students and the instructor on the message board. The message board is a great tool for reinforcing the concepts you've learned and applying them to your organization.

Get involved on the message board! You can exchange ideas, share your expertise and offer feedback to help you get more from this class.

After completing this class, you'll have a wealth of information available to understand how a SAN can provide your organization with the data storage and management tools it needs to efficiently provision cost-effective storage resources.

Now that you have an overview of what this class offers, it's time to get started with your first lesson.