Customer Reviews

The Essential Guide to Storage Area Networks

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The book is weak on specifics, and inundated with
meaningless statements. Very few schemes and graphs
and setups,of systems, and many generalized devoid of
understanding lines. This is a useless book.

This book will tell you about Brocade's stock price and EMC's corporate culture, and about computer forensics' need of SAN storage, and about FC-AL, but if you need to know the different scalability characteristics of GFS versus StorageTank for your SAN file system, this is the wrong book (neither is even mentioned). I do like the fact that VAXclusters get mentioned; too many books think SAN means Fibre Channel only. "IDE" in this context means "integrated drive electronics", NOT "integrated development environment" (I consider this to be a fairly serious gaffe). Overall, I think the lack of information on how you turn a pile of hardware into a working system is a big drawback.

John did a great job of presenting conceptual information, in a very easy to understand format. He also presented a truck-load of vendor information; some of these vendors I had never heard of in 23 years in the business (although I did have a 6 year hiatus in the middle 80's). This is an excellent book which will help the reader make a decision on whether or not to go with a SAN solution for their business decisions. My only gripe, and this is probably just me, is that there is not enough specific information on actually "nuts&bolts" running and managing a live SAN. There is a nice glossary provided, which has helped me in the day to day management, but for the common sysadmin, who is trying to manage one of these complicated beasts, I could use a lot more specific information than that which is provided. A great book for the beginner (buy the book), a great book for the mid-level Technical Services Manager (BUY the book) who needs to know what a SAN is and what it can do for him and his company. For the sysadmin, it needs more information (unless you're a sysadmin who has never had experience with a SAN - then, in every case, BUYthis book!!!) find something more specific.

Overall, nice work, Mr. Vacca. I enjoyed it - it filled in the gaps.

If you or someomne you know is thinging about installing a storage area network then you better read this book.
This book is the bible on the subject. Goes from inital concept
and into planning, design, setup, implementation and maintaing of SAN's. John Vacca always does his homework and presents actual usefull what if's and explains why and how in full detail.
This book truly helps you through the entire process and provides tests and checks and balances so you should have a seamless process. As always John Vacca looks not only at the present but delves into future needs and future outlooks with uncanny knowledge of what is coming.

Very complete, informative, in depth on the subject as John Vacca has accustomed his readers over the years.

Mainly for managers, more concepts. Too much talking about concept stuff. Hard for engineers to read.

John Vacca has consolidated a great deal of information in this book about an increasingly important subject to the data processing environments. As the need for information storage is increasing at an alarming rate, the management of storage systems is becoming even more important than before. One way to address this critical issue is with Storage Area Networks. The book discusses all aspects of Storage Area Networks (SAN) starting with design considerations through implementation and maintenance. He discusses the standards that are being developed as more and more organizations include SANs in their networks. He discusses the available vendors for both hardware and software as well as companies that serve as Storage Service Providers. John Vacca has done a great job in addressing this important subject in his book.

Vacca has done it again--"it" being a highly comprehensive, fact-laden treatment of an important information technology subject; in this case, SANs. Part 1 of the book provides an overview of SAN technology, starting with SAN fundamentals--and giving scant notice to network attached storage, which some once considered the competitor of SANs. Part 2 proceeds to designing SANs, while Part 3 addresses planning for SANs, Part 4 deals with installing and deploying SANs, Part 5 discusses maintaining SANs, and Part 6 deals with SAN solutions and future directions. In short, the book provides all you ever wanted to know about storage and SANs, completed by six appendices and a glossary. Vacca has provided a meaty discussion that will prove essential for all those trying to make costly decisions about SANs in their organizations.

John's ability to gather and organize very technical information into a very readable and understandable book never ceases to amaze me. This book is no exception. I'm in the process of evaluating SAN solutions for my company and have found this book to be invaluable in providing me a decision-making framework. I firmly believe that, with the aid of this book, I will save my company tens of thousands of dollars making this with out a doubt one of the most valuable SAN technical references in my library.

"Storage hardware is about as exciting to most IT and business managers as watching pet rocks sunbathe." (p. 15)

So true! I had to laugh - but we do have to know. So Vacca has again written a readable book that explains the technologies involved in SANs in a way that can be understood by and used by any audience.

From plain English descriptions of SAN options, concepts, and philosophies, drilling right down to complex engineering calculations, Vacca covers hardware, software, standards, security, costs, testing, recovery, scalability, and what you need to know from making the management decisions right through to the implementation.

Of particularly interest to me was how SANs address the problems incurred by decentralisation. The centralise/decentralise cycle has been a recurring headache for many major corporations I have worked with, because of data storage, access, integrity, redundancy, and recovery. And this problem has been exacerbated by both volume and by the Internet. His sections on testing technology are also immediately applicable to any SAN implementation. Cost/benefit analysis of data availability and recovery is described so clearly that I wondered why I ever found this to be a problem. And web issues are explored: "The Web also creates glorious storage problems...". Not only does he explain what they are and why, and provide real life examples, he also proposes viable solutions.

An invaluable and comprehensive assimilation of information, and comprehensible as well!