SAN technology evolved from direct-attach interconnects like Small Computer Systems Interface (SCSI).

Fibre Channel supports SCSI, Internet Protocol (IP), and the Fibre Channel Virtual Interface (FC-VI) Protocol.

The distance between Fibre Channel nodes can be as much as 10 km.

Fibre Channel supports copper, multimode optical, and single-mode optical media.

SAN technology has moved from Fibre Channel Arbitrated Loop to full Fibre Channel switch fabric.

Data storage needs are increasing rapidly.

Requirements due to databases, e-mail, multimedia, and the Internet have dramatically increased the required amount of storage for data.

Disk farms, storage arrays, and storage consolidation are the keys to solving the storage problem.

Fibre Channel is ideal for supporting high-availability configurations and business-critical back-end operations, due to the ability to set up redundant networks and clusters.

SAN technology allows for storage consolidation and data pooling for more efficient use of storage resources.

Backup windows are shrinking, and backup traffic on the LAN can be easily reduced by using a SAN to reduce network congestion due to backup.

Block-level, high-speed access through SCSI-Fibre Channel Protocol (FCP) can accelerate data access between storage and hosts, and can free up host resources that would be occupied serving files and data through IP.

Cluster protocol access through FC-VI frees up CPU cycles in hosts and...