SANs were a great leap forward for reliable centralized data storage. Yet storing most of the company data on a single SAN presented challenges for IT managers, who feared that a catastrophic event such as a flood or fire might damage or destroy priceless stored data. Replication is the ideal solution to protect data against these types of events but has traditionally been cost prohibitive for many companies.
SAN replication has obvious advantages to data-intensive businesses. In the past, it had its limitations: Initially SAN-to-SAN was available only for business that ran on large Enterprise SANs from companies like IBM or EMC. However, with recent technological advancements, lower costs do to competition and offerings from Cloud Service Providers, today SAN-to-SAN replication is available for small- and medium-sized businesses starting even on entry level SANs.
The idea behind SAN-to-SAN replication is simple, yet groundbreaking: Essentially SAN-to-SAN replication is a service where a centralized repository of archived data is duplicated at the hardware or block level to another centralized data storage location. With SAN-to-SAN replication, only the blocks of data that have been manipulated are replicated; the replication takes place in near real-time.
The advantages of SAN-to-SAN replication are numerous. Paramount among them is the fact that that SAN-to-SAN replication is cross-platform — that is, it can work with multiple platforms such as IBM i, AIX, Windows, or Linux. Since replication configuration and management happens through ‘a single pane of glass,’ it’s also very easy to manage.
Enterprises of all sizes are gravitating to SAN-to-SAN replication for all of the right reasons: It works across multiple platforms; it’s simple to manage; it’s highly cost-effective; it does not impact system performance; and no expensive software licenses or separate systems are required.
SAN-to-SAN replication is a low-cost, highly efficient way to manage mounting quantities of stored data. We’ll show you how to upgrade your storage capabilities and put SAN-to-SAN technology to work for you. Contact your SIAS representative today.