What Is a SAN?
A SAN contains multiple high-performance hard drives coupled with high-performance caching controllers. The hard drives are often configured into various RAID configurations. These drive configurations are virtualized so that the consumer does not know which hard drives a SQL Server or other device connected to the SAN will access. Essentially, the SAN presents blocks of storage to servers that can consist of a single hard drive, multiple hard drives, or portions of hard drives in a logical unit called a Logical Unit Number (LUN). Connection to a SAN is typically through fiber channel, a high-speed optical network.
SANS can provide advantages over locally attached storage. Most SANs provide features that allow you to clone, snapshot, ...
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