Customer Reviews

Designing Storage Area Networks: A Practical Reference for Implementing Fibre Channel and IP SANs (2nd Edition)

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This was a very good overview of the many varied components and technologies that make up a storage area network. It goes into a lot of detail about things like standards, protocols, speeds, etc. If you want to understand the differences between iSCSI and FCIP, for example, this is the book for you. The word "Reference" in the subtitle is accurate. It's not a guide on how to administer a SAN day-to-day in the real-world; it's about the concepts and details of what a SAN really is. The writing style is a little dry, but I didn't expect it to be a page-turner. My only disappointment was when I realized that over 1/4 of the book is devoted to appendices, glossary and index instead of written content.

This book is quite dry, no question about that, but not as dry as the standards published by organizations in charge with Fibre Channel standards. Yet, as a SAN designer or SAN administrator you can find in it all the information you need to understand the inner details of a Loop Insertion Primitive or how an Alternate buffer-to-buffer credit model works. Compared with other books on the subject is remarcably error free and I was nicely impressed by Mr. Clark's considerations upon what should be the customer' role in steering vendors in developing products that are more open and interoperate better.

This book is a very good overview of the field. The information contained therein is a little dated, but most of it still applies to today. It is well written and concise.

This is the kind of book that will give a solid foundation on storage concepts like iSCSI, iFCP, FCIP, SAN. It's not super detailed like reading standards documents. What I really liked on this book is the way it was written, it is very clear and easy to understand especially for a beginner or an IP network guy like me.

Good details description very easy to read, facts and information from the very basic to very technical. A definite good technical read.

A good overview of SAN technology. My first exposure to SANs and Fiber Channel switches was the Web interfaces for the devices we have. I bought this book and it made much sense of what I saw in the Web pages. While not perfect (and not vendor specific), it covers the topic concisely and throroughly.