Building Storage Networks (Network Professional's Library)

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Marc Farley

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Pages: 656 (Paperback)

ISBN: 0072130725

Pub: McGraw-Hill Osborne

Pub date: 2001-06-01

Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 548375

Editorial Review:

Building Storage Networks offers an excellent introduction to the burgeoning field of storage networks.
A few years ago, we were told the future was storage and the average IT engineer does need to manage a staggering amount of data.
Storage devices have been around as long as computers. Whether a cassette or tape drive in the early 1980s, or a multi-gigabyte hard drive in today's computers, the growth of storage has gone hand in hand with the growth of computers. During this time, storage capacity has risen dramatically. Even 10 years ago, industry professionals touted the phrase "disk is cheap," effectively writing off storage as a commodity--and this was when hard drives were 120 MB or less. During the last decade, continuing improvements in storage technology coincided with the explosion of the Internet, creating a huge demand for reliable, large-scale storage systems. Most businesses have recognised that data is a critical part of their IT systems, what author Marc Farley calls an "independent asset", equal in stature to applications and other system software.
Building Storage Networks gives information professionals the basic skills to understand modern storage technologies. The two common storage acronyms bandied about today are SAN (Storage Area Network) and NAS (Network Attached Storage). The author argues that these are two different manifestations of a common set of principles, which all professionals should understand no matter which solution they implement.
After an in-depth discussion of his three key storage concepts--wiring, storing, and filing--Farley fleshes out the role of storage in today's corporate networks. This includes the details of storage implementation, different cabling and communication options, backup management, and future developments (eg:, Infiniband).
This book is easily accessible to intermediate readers familiar with basic networking topologies and computer terminology. Also helpful are a healthy number of illustrations used to effectively communicate complex topics. At the end of each chapter is a comprehensive summary, followed by several exercises, allowing the reader to fully grasp various storage concepts before proceeding.

Building Storage Networks can be used as an entry point for those wishing to learn about modern storage technologies, or as a reference for IT professionals already knee-deep in storage networks. However, almost all storage issues are considered in the abstract, without explicit reference to a particular vendor's hardware. Although an occasional reference is made to a specific product, the author sets out to educate the reader on storage issues, not to replace the manual for a particular piece of storage hardware. --Pete Ostenson

Reader Reviews:

A reference manual that you can read cover to cover (4/4 people found this helpful)

Being a bit lazy I wouldn't normally read a reference manual from start to finish, I would just look at the bits I needed to.
This book, however, is different. Topics are well presented and easy to read with full explanations on everything and for once it is a technical book that is easy to read from cover to cover.

If you need a book on Storage Networks buy this one.

If Storage is your game, DO read this. (5/5 people found this helpful)

Although long, this book I read in a week - like a novel. Marc has written an extremely book, which not only provides a good conceptual understanding of the technology, but there is enough technical information here to excite most people. I have spent 20 years in IT, the last 6 of which were spent providing technical consultancy on High Availability Unix clusters, yet I still learnt some intersting stuff.

I particularly enjoyed the way the subject was presented - extremely well laid out, and plenty of diagrams.

In an age when 90% of authors appear not to understand their own subjects, it's a delight when one stumbles on a book so worthy.

Farley provided the kind of read, which is normally only supplied by guys such as Tanenbaum, Comer, Knuth and Rich Seifert.

Marc, I'm glad you wrote this book. Nice one.

Excellent Follow on 2nd Edition Buildling Storage Network (3/5 people found this helpful)

Is this book worth buying......the Answer is Yes. Although it is a 2nd edition 50% percent of the book is covered in the original. Marc Falvey has included interesting updates on Wiring Technology (The Plumbing in your SAN/NAS) which usually dictates what you can actually achieve.

The updated sections on Infiniband & clustering were very interesting. I am a fan Marc Falvey books in the area of SAN's, however i would like him to include ; 1)Competive Analysis Intelligent Disk Subsystems

2)Cascading Switches in a SAN environment for fault tolerance and ease of management. 3)The use of intelligent volume manager, VxVM to group SAN building blocks together. Especially important in Windows. 4)Large section covering Security. Consquences of various protocols & associated files systems. This is especially important with the new range of multi-protocol switch'es becoming availbale.

Essential Reference Guide for Storage Admin/ SAN users (2/2 people found this helpful)

Large book which covers basic RAID / Performance Information / Connectivity / SAN typology design and is up todate......e.g Includes EMC Timefinder references. Well written and very comprehensive. Very good reference book which I continually use.

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