I always thought SAN was essentially cloud storage in that you have an external pool of storage servers connected to your LAN.
By my understanding, the limitation is that traditionally, servers from different vendors in a SAN required their own specific storage because of different environments (Windows vs. Linux for example)
Does cloud storage specifically refer to being able to virtualize the servers such that it is vendor-agnostic?
In: Technology
Cloud anything simply means that it’s accessible over the internet. Generally, you’re talking about a storage *service* in the case of cloud storage. Something like Google Drive or Dropbox. The service manages the storage and provides you with an interface to access your data through.
On the provider’s end, they likely are using multiple SANs to store your data. A company like Dropbox likely has a dozen racks or more of drive arrays in their datacenter, and then 20 or 30 datacenters across the world. When a new customer comes on board, they get a virtual disk that they can access and it’s copied across multiple datacenters so that their safe in the case of a natural disaster or data corruption.
But the point is that a SAN is essentially the hardware configuration, while cloud storage describes a methodology of using that hardware.
Latest Answers