Storage Area Networking (SAN)

Storage is the backbone of any technology infrastructure.  It's importance is often overlooked and consequently many companies find themselves backed into a corner when it comes to performance, scalability and upgrades.  At Flytrap, we take these and many other factors into account when making storage recommendations to our clients.  We do our best to educate clients and prospects considering storage alternatives to ensure they make the best decision.
 

FC versus IP

One area of common misconception in storage area networking is that Fiber Channel is a superior and more reliable platform than IP.  This is completely inaccurate on several levels.  Many of the new storage vendors are iSCSI only and there is good reason for this.  Flytrap has completely embraced IP SAN storage and we have built our storage practice largely around the migration from FC to IP SAN.  FC to IP SAN migration is not something restricted to the mid market; savvy Enterprise clients are moving in this direction as well.  The storage products we resell are a reflection of our belief in IP SAN storage.

Storage Virtualization

Storage Virtualization is a term being thrown around a lot today.  However, it should be understood that there are many forms of storage virtualization.  At it's root, virtualization should provide the ability to dynamically provision and grow storage volumes and should allow for zero downtime upgrades and maintenance (similar to what VMware does for servers).  However, there are variations in how "virtualization" can be interpreted (e.g. does it imply hardware agnostic?).  You should decide what you want the virtualization to provide you with before deciding on what type of storage virtualization solution to go with.