Fibre-channel storage area networks connect servers and storage devices.
A fibre-channel storage area network (SAN) is a specialized, high-speed network that attaches servers and storage devices. With a SAN, you can perform an any-to-any connection across the network using interconnect elements such as routers, gateways and switches. With a SAN, you can eliminate the connection between a server, storage, and the concept that the server effectively owns and manages the storage devices.
The SAN also eliminates any restriction to the amount of data that a server can access. This restriction is limited by the number of storage devices that can be attached to the individual server. Instead, a SAN introduces the flexibility of networking to enable one server or many heterogeneous servers to share a common storage utility. This might comprise many storage devices, including disk, tape, and optical storage. You can locate the storage utility far from the servers that use it.
Fibre-channel SANs, however, provide the capability to interconnect open systems and storage in the same network as S/390® and zSeries® host systems and storage. You can map the protocols for attaching open systems and S/390 and zSeries host systems to the FC-4 layer of the fibre-channel architecture.