A storage area network (SAN) is a pool of storage systems in a SAN that are interconnected to the servers in an enterprise. A SAN administrator is the person responsible for administering the various resources on the SAN.
A SAN allows the establishment of direct connections between storage devices and servers. It offers simplified storage management, scalability, flexibility, availability, and improved data access, movement, and backup.
A SAN storage system consists of two to eight SAN Volume Controller nodes that are arranged in a cluster. These will appear as part of the SAN fabric, along with the host systems, the RAID controllers, and the storage devices, all connected together to create the SAN. Other devices such as fabric switches might be required to complete the SAN.