Driving Down the Cost of SANs

Hoping to help drive down the cost and complexity of storage area networks (SANs) and thereby entice more businesses into using them, Microsoft has launched a new logo program called “Simple SAN.” SANs allow multiple servers to access external storage controllers, and they can provide higher availability, scalability, and efficiency than direct-attached storage (DAS). Microsoft also released Version 2 of the iSCSI driver software for Windows Server 2003, which makes building SANs with fully redundant networks less expensive.

However, even though SANs are now less complex and their price is coming down, direct-attached storage has become so cheap that SAN vendors will still have a hard time finding a market for SANs in the small or mid-size business segments.

SANs Not Just for Large Organizations?

Microsoft’s Simple SAN initiative is based on its analysis that significantly more medium-size and small organizations will use and benefit from SANs if their cost and complexity are reduced.