h as Ethernet or Fast Ethernet cards or even hub connections. NAS makes storage resources more readily available and helps alleviate bottlenecks associated with access to storage devices. It has proven more useful in areas where a relatively low volume of data traverses the links. In general, NAS has been shown to suffer from a couple of major drawbacks: As most NAS devices are coupled to the LAN through 10 Mbps Ethernet or 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet cards, a certain bandwidth shortage occurs when storage is accessed. This situation will continue to occur until Gigabit Ethernet and even 10 Gigabit Ethernet interfaces become commonplace in this area. A clear lack of cohesion exists among storage devices. If disk arrays and tape drives are on the LAN, managing the devices can be challenging because they are seen as separate entities and are not tied together logically. As large enterprises want the ability to store and manage large amounts of information in a high- performance environment, a new technology has appeared in the landscape: storage area networks (SANs). In a SAN environment, storage devices, such as redundant array of inexpensive disk (RAID) arrays, are connected to several kinds of servers through a high-speed interconnection, typically a Fibre Channel. This provides fast access to storage from all types of servers. It also provides the con- venience of alternative paths to storage through an alternative server, should the server of choice turn out to be unavailable or slow. Using a SAN, data can be easily mirrored and disaster recovery sites can be created, while storage access bandwidth can be added without burdening the main LAN. Online backups can take place on a SAN without causing any inconvenience to LAN users. When more stor- age is needed, it is directly attached to the SAN rather than being hooked up to one of the LAN servers. The greatest benefit this technology provides is that it is managed centrally as a single entity; each device is not managed individually. This makes it easier to manage v