Network Storage
Video Activity
Join over 3 million cybersecurity professionals advancing their career
Sign up with
Required fields are marked with an *
or
Already have an account? Sign In »
Video Transcription
00:00
>> In our next section, we're going to
00:00
take a look at network storage.
00:00
Big reason that we network is because we have
00:00
data and information that we want to share.
00:00
There are lots of different ways that we share data.
00:00
Traditionally, we've had a file servers on our network.
00:00
Those are basic computer systems that we've had
00:00
the sole purpose of storing
00:00
files and serving those files.
00:00
But now as we move forward,
00:00
we find that we have so much information
00:00
that we're managing today that we've
00:00
really outgrown the typical hard drive
00:00
on the file server and we need something more,
00:00
so we have network attached storage.
00:00
This is one method of increasing
00:00
your storage space on the network.
00:00
Basically, this is just a storage of clients.
00:00
It's just like a hard drive on steroids, if you will.
00:00
It's going to provide file level storage and it's
00:00
accessible on the network using some network protocols.
00:00
Specifically, things like SMB,
00:00
which stands for Server Messaging Blocks,
00:00
and NFS, which is Network Filing System.
00:00
Those are some protocols that would allow
00:00
the access of those particular files.
00:00
An alternative to network
00:00
attached storage is to have a Storage Area Network.
00:00
See you've got a NAS and you've got a SAN.
00:00
But with SAN,
00:00
you have a specific network designated to
00:00
store data and you're accessing that data,
00:00
usually across a high speed connection.
00:00
You've got the host layer,
00:00
which are the individual systems on your network PCs,
00:00
the systems that have the data to store.
00:00
Then you have what's called the fabric layer,
00:00
which is the media across which the data travels.
00:00
Then you have the storage layer,
00:00
which is whatever your storage devices
00:00
are in that specific network.
00:00
How do we connect to the SAN?
00:00
Well, it has to be
00:00
high speed connectivity of some form or fashion.
00:00
There's something called a Fiber Channel over Ethernet.
00:00
That ultimately is going to use fiber channel switches.
00:00
That's specifically a Layer 3 switch that's
00:00
compatible within a fiber channel environment.
00:00
Ultimately, what we're looking at in this section
00:00
is a pretty high speed solution
00:00
when looking at a fiber channel.
00:00
It's about 1,010 gigabits per
00:00
second and we're seeing even more of that today.
00:00
You can see some of these elements
00:00
or we've had the initiator connecting
00:00
through the switch to the actual
00:00
storage area network on the backend.
00:00
There's also an alternative to connect to
00:00
a storage area network across an iSCSI environment.
00:00
Back in the day, we used to talk a lot
00:00
about iSCSI hard drives,
00:00
small computer systems interface.
00:00
In our servers, we would have iSCSI devices
00:00
>> because iSCSI provided faster access and there was
00:00
>> a lot more functionality with the iSCSI system.
00:00
Now what we're doing is taking an extension of that.
00:00
The benefit of a iSCSI environment is you'll
00:00
notice I'm not using anything with a fiber channel.
00:00
I'm able to take advantage and to
00:00
leverage my existing network infrastructure.
00:00
Where I'm storing my data is on
00:00
the backend on my iSCSI target area.
00:00
We refer to those spaces or
00:00
specific storage locations biological unit number.
00:00
Ultimately, that's a pointer that points
00:00
to a specific location on the SAN network.
00:00
We do that to obfuscate to someone on the outside
00:00
>> where specifically the data is being stored,
00:00
>> so that LUN is used to prevent too much information
00:00
>> being disclosed and being available.
00:00
>> Now, InfiniBand is
00:00
a relatively new communication standard.
00:00
This is for very high performance environments
00:00
where we want next to no latency.
00:00
Ultimately, this is going to be
00:00
in a specific switch network.
00:00
This can be connected to
00:00
a SAN to provide even greater speed.
00:00
This is just one of those new technologies.
00:00
Also to connect to SAN,
00:00
we might be using the idea of jumbo frames,
00:00
which means we have an environment where
00:00
some more information can be
00:00
combined into a single frame.
00:00
That means we'll get
00:00
much better performance rather than having lots of
00:00
little frames and being able to
00:00
transmit more information in a single frame.
00:00
Just to wrap up with network storage,
00:00
network attached storage devices
00:00
are storage appliances on the network,
00:00
>> whereas a storage area network is offsite
00:00
>> or at least on a segmented network
00:00
that you can access either through
00:00
Fiber Channel over Ethernet or iSCSI technology.
00:00
InfiniBand can also be a solution for
00:00
high-speed access for storage area networks.
00:00
Another means of providing
00:00
quick access is through the use of jumbo frames.
Up Next
Similar Content
