Z-SAN is a proprietary type of Storage area network

Storage area network

A storage area network is a dedicated network that provides access to consolidated, block level data storage. SANs are primarily used to make storage devices, such as disk arrays, tape libraries, and optical jukeboxes, accessible to servers so that the devices appear like locally attached devices...

 licensed by Zetera corporation. Z-SAN hardware is bundled with a modified version of SAN-FS, which is a Shared disk file system driver and management software product made by DataPlow. The shared disk file system is what allows multiple computers to access the same volume at block level. The Z-SAN software license is purchased as part of the hardware package, whereas the stand alone SAN-FS software (which works on iSCSI and FCP) is licensed by number of user seats.

The Z-SAN hardware is similar to the ATA over Ethernet

ATA over Ethernet

ATA over Ethernet is a network protocol developed by the Brantley Coile Company, designed for simple, high-performance access of SATA storage devices over Ethernet networks. It is used to build storage area networks with low-cost, standard technologies.- Protocol description :AoE runs on layer 2...

 hardware sold by Coraid and Lefthand Networks. Currently Zetera does not sell products directly, but instead licenses its technology to various other companies such as Netgear and Bell Microproducts. Like AoE, Z-SAN is intended to be a low-cost alternative to Fibre Channel

Fibre Channel

Fibre Channel, or FC, is a gigabit-speed network technology primarily used for storage networking. Fibre Channel is standardized in the T11 Technical Committee of the InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standards , an American National Standards Institute –accredited standards...

 and iSCSI

ISCSI

In computing, iSCSI , is an abbreviation of Internet Small Computer System Interface, an Internet Protocol -based storage networking standard for linking data storage facilities. By carrying SCSI commands over IP networks, iSCSI is used to facilitate data transfers over intranets and to manage...

. They do this by eliminating the need for the Host adapter

Host adapter

In computer hardware, a host controller, host adapter, or host bus adapter connects a host system to other network and storage devices...

 and TCP Offload Engine

TCP Offload Engine

TCP offload engine or TOE is a technology used in network interface cards to offload processing of the entire TCP/IP stack to the network controller...

 hardware, as well as use standard Ethernet switches instead of the more expensive fibre channel switches.

AoE is mostly supported on Linux, Z-SAN is supported on Windows platforms. A Z-SAN can array many more disks than a standard RAID

RAID

RAID is a storage technology that combines multiple disk drive components into a logical unit...

. The Zetera website claims that MIT has a Z-SAN array totaling 1.4 Petabyte

Petabyte

A petabyte is a unit of information equal to one quadrillion bytes, or 1000 terabytes. The unit symbol for the petabyte is PB...

s of storage. The Disk array

Disk array

A disk array is a disk storage system which contains multiple disk drives. It is differentiated from a disk enclosure, in that an array has cache memory and advanced functionality, like RAID and virtualization.Components of a typical disk array include:...

s can be both striped and mirrored.

External links

• http://www.computerpoweruser.com/articles/archive/c0604/28c04/28c04.pdf Article about Z-SAN
• http://www.zetera.com/
• http://www.coraid.com/