Apple Xsan 1.4 - Manual (Page 39)

Chapter 2 Setting Up a Storage Area Network 39
Planning Your SAN
It’s easy to add storage to an existing Xsan SAN, but reorganizing a SAN after you set it
up is not so simple. So, it’s important to plan the layout and organization of your SAN
and its storage before you set it up.
An Xsan SAN is composed of:
 Storage devices (usually Xserve RAID systems)
 LUNs (logical unit numbers, usually RAID arrays)
 Storage pools (groups of LUNs)
 Volumes (groups of storage pools visible to users)
 Clients (computers that use volumes)
 Controllers (computers that manage volume metadata)
 Underlying Fibre Channel and Ethernet networks
Before you use Xsan Admin to set up a SAN, decide how you want to organize these
components. Take the time to create a drawing or a table that organizes available
hardware into RAID arrays, storage pools, volumes, client computers, and controllers in
a way that meets both your users’ needs and your needs as the SAN administrator.
Then, consider the following questions.