Books

Average customer rating:

Great for folks new to this area of IT
This is a entry-level book. Too general for serious work
Great book on the theory of NAS and SAN
Good Overview
Good introduction

Using SANs and NAS
W. Curtis Preston
Manufacturer: O'Reilly Media, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Storage Area Networks for Dummies
Backup & Recovery
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Storage Networks Explained: Basics and Application of Fibre Channel SAN, NAS iSCSI and InfiniBand

ASIN: 0596001533

Book Description

Data is the lifeblood of modern business, and modern data centers have extremely demanding requirements for size, speed, and reliability. Storage Area Networks (SANs) and Network Attached Storage (NAS) allow organizations to manage and back up huge file systems quickly, thereby keeping their lifeblood flowing. W. Curtis Preston's insightful book takes you through the ins and outs of building and managing large data centers using SANs and NAS.

As a network administrator you're aware that multi-terabyte data stores are common and petabyte data stores are starting to appear. Given this much data, how do you ensure that it is available all the time, that access times and throughput are reasonable, and that the data can be backed up and restored in a timely manner? SANs and NAS provide solutions that help you work through these problems, with special attention to the difficulty of backing up huge data stores.

This book explains the similarities and differences of SANs and NAS to help you determine which, or both, of these complementing technologies are appropriate for your network. Using SANs, for instance, is a way to share multiple devices (tape drives and disk drives) for storage, while NAS is a means for centrally storing files so they can be shared. Preston exams each technology with a vendor neutral approach, starting with the building blocks of a SAN and how they can be assembled for effective storage solutions. He covers day-to-day management and backup and recovery for both SANs and NAS in detail.

Whether you're a seasoned storage administrator or a network administrator charged with taking on this role, you'll find all the information you need to make informed architecture and data management decisions. The book fans out to explore technologies such as RAID and other forms of monitoring that will help complement your data center. With an eye on the future, other technologies that might affect the architecture and management of the data center are explored. This is sure to be an essential volume in any network administrator's or storage administrator's library.

Customer Reviews:

Great for folks new to this area of IT.......2007-06-18

This book gives great description of SANS and NAS. In addition, a clear comparison of SANS and NAS technologies is given which is helpful in deciding what is right for your own organization. This book is not exhaustive on the subjects, but do point the reader in the right direction. I thought the time spent on the topic of backups was especially nice.

This is a entry-level book. Too general for serious work.......2007-05-15

This book focuses on general concept and structure. No vendor specified information is included. It is a good entry-level book. But serious SAN/NAS users will need more detailed information.

Great book on the theory of NAS and SAN.......2007-02-14

I found this book to be very helpful in sorting out the differences between the two technologies that have started to blur in many ways. I read this book from cover to cover and the layout was great. The book starts with a good overview of the past technologies that most IT people know and then begins to compair them to NAS and SAN and shows how those old technologies are evolving to fit into the new design.

As someone who has not had exposure to Fiber Channel hands on the book did a great job of explaining the technology and what part it plays. It gives a real nuts and bolts explination of the peices and what they all do.

The book then goes into describing SAN. It gives some typical uses along with the advantages and even the disavantages of SAN. In the next chapter it describes one of the major advantages to SAN in terms of Backup and Recovery. It doesn't go into detail and tell you what the commands are to do these things but more what you need to get the job done and what role each part plays.

The next three chapters are on NAS. The first one gives an overview of NAS and goes into uses along with the advantages and disadvantages of it. The second chapter gives information on how to manage NAS and is a bit too specific but does give a good foundation for the things that you need to look for to get the most out of NAS. The thirst chapter is on Backup and Recovery in a NAS environment. It gives a good overview of the technologies that exist but again gets into a little too much detail and is hung up on specific technologies.

Overall I would suggest this book to any IT people who have a solid background in server and network technology but are looking for what storage solutions exist and how they can be leveraged.

Good Overview.......2005-01-27

This book has a good 10K foot overview and basic groundings for beginners. Also is good at comparing and contrasting SAN vs NAS. But, very light on detail especially in the area of NAS. If you don't know anything about SAN/NAS give it a read. If you've much experience it'll be mostly review.

Good introduction.......2004-01-06

Hi,

This books serves as good introduction to SAN and NAS. It covers backup and recovery for SANs very nicely and at appropriate level. As far as NAS is concerned, it skims the topic.

Its a good introduction to various technologies. The details will have to found elsewhere.

Overall review - worth reading it.

Designing Storage Area Networks: A Practical Reference for Implementing Fibre Channel and IP SANs, Second Edition

Average customer rating:

Understand technology behind without reading T11 standards
Very detailed description of SAN technology

Designing Storage Area Networks: A Practical Reference for Implementing Fibre Channel and IP SANs, Second Edition
Tom Clark
Manufacturer: Addison-Wesley Professional
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0321136500

Customer Reviews:

Understand technology behind without reading T11 standards .......2005-03-05

This book is quite dry, no question about that, but not as dry as the standards published by organizations in charge with Fibre Channel standards. Yet, as a SAN designer or SAN administrator you can find in it all the information you need to understand the inner details of a Loop Insertion Primitive or how an Alternate buffer-to-buffer credit model works. Compared with other books on the subject is remarcably error free and I was nicely impressed by Mr. Clark's considerations upon what should be the customer' role in steering vendors in developing products that are more open and interoperate better.

Very detailed description of SAN technology.......2003-11-17

This was a very good overview of the many varied components and technologies that make up a storage area network. It goes into a lot of detail about things like standards, protocols, speeds, etc. If you want to understand the differences between iSCSI and FCIP, for example, this is the book for you. The word "Reference" in the subtitle is accurate. It's not a guide on how to administer a SAN day-to-day in the real-world; it's about the concepts and details of what a SAN really is. The writing style is a little dry, but I didn't expect it to be a page-turner. My only disappointment was when I realized that over 1/4 of the book is devoted to appendices, glossary and index instead of written content.

Average customer rating:

great book for researcher

Fibre Channel for SANs
Alan Frederic Benner
Manufacturer: McGraw-Hill Professional
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0071374132

Book Description

PRACTICAL ROADMAP FOR DESIGNING AND DEPLOYING A SAN Fibre Channel has come into its own as the defining network architecture for Storage Area Networks (SANs), which are proving critical for managing the volume and complexity of data generated by Internet-era applications. Fibre Channel for SANs, by Dr. Alan F. Benner, shows you how Fibre Channel works, how it integrates with other protocols and systems, and how to implement it to create a SAN for fast access to mass storage. It walks you through the ANSI standard’s 5 levels, from the physical transmission level through interfaces to upper layer protocols, and demonstrates mapping SCSI and IP over Fibre Channel. You get a wealth of timesaving illustrations and practical suggestions for troubleshooting. You learn how to:

*Build expertise in the standard used by ISPs for Web page storage, and by enterprise data centers for managing multi-Terabyte storage requirements
*Create bandwidth-sparing solutions for multimedia—voice, video, animation, music—and real-time video conferencing
*Implement logins and logouts, link services, error detection and recovery, flow control, and more

Customer Reviews:

great book for researcher.......2002-01-14

If you're interested in FC protocol detail this book is right for you. After reading through the whole book you will find it's easiler to understand FC standards... Hopefully the author can include more figures especially flowcharts in next edition.

Securing Storage: A Practical Guide to SAN and NAS Security

Average customer rating:

Poorly Edited - almost unreadable - but good content
Less storage security, and more network security
Good Addition to Any System Admin Refferance Shelf
Well-written book, poor proofreading
an unsettling text to some sysadmins

Securing Storage: A Practical Guide to SAN and NAS Security
Himanshu Dwivedi
Manufacturer: Addison-Wesley Professional
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0321349954

Customer Reviews:

Poorly Edited - almost unreadable - but good content.......2007-02-02

So far the content is good, but the editing is so bad that it leaves the book almost unreadable. I understand there may a language issue, but give me a break, I am paying $40.00 for a hard cover, professional book, written in english and published by a well known and respected publisher. I believe I should be able to reasonably expect that the grammar is correct and blatant typos are removed - this book looks more like a draft than a final copy. Some sentences are so bad they make no sense, which makes reading the book challenging since you have to skim over the nonsense to extract the useful information.

I gave it a 3 for the content, I would give it a 1 for readability and quality. I will be asking Addison Wesley for my money back on this one.

Less storage security, and more network security.......2006-09-13

This book is written in very human-friendly language , you can read this book very easily like a magazine. The author divided this books into three parts , and those are NAS security, SAN security and iSCSI security. As the author said in the beginning of this book, this book for only introduction to storage security, and the author does only that.

When it comes to negative points, the major problem with this book is , the author telling the story again and again . If he explained one point , he will repeat the same thing again and again later. So , out of 400 pages the book has , at the end of the day, you are getting only 100 page worth of knowledge.

On more major issue with this book is , the author didn't given sufficient information about the actual storage security protocols like FCSP and others.

Don't expect too much from this book , this book is a very simple and introduction level book to storage security.

Good Addition to Any System Admin Refferance Shelf.......2006-05-10

Dwivedi does an excellent job of covering a little thought about area of networking that is growing rapidly.

The layout of the book is well thought out and takes the reader thru a step-by-step process of how networked storage is hacked. This is not a book that you would want to read once and expect to have all the answers. Dwivedi has written this book with both the reader and that concept in mind. It contains a vast amount of knowledge about network storage secutity. There is so much information that memorizing this book would be impossible
Dwivedi provides the reader with numerous assessment exercises making it easier to understand the large amount of information and techniques presented. It is thoroughly indexed and arranged in away that allows anyone to access an attack method and reference that process including the downloads with which to attack any choosen vulnerability.

The introduction section of this book gives anyone with little or no network storage knowledge a very concise understanding of risk management, security basics and attack scenarios. It is finalized with a handy question and answer section that helps tie it all together.

Dwivedi covers processes, types of storage and the designs most commonly used in storage networks in great detail. He covers SAN, NAS and iSCSI Security and the ways in which to attack each successfully. Every conceivable attack on network storage and how they are done, including many links to scripts are included for the reader. They show the reader general storage network knowledge and how to audit their own systems for security weaknesses. It gives the reader a very broad overview of the subject with detailed specifics, which helps to understand the technical basis of attacks and how to deter those attacks.

Dwivedi wraps it all together with details on how to lock down each of the network storage types in detail. As with the rest of the book he lists precise step-by-step ways to
audit a system and keep out the unauthorized. In the last part of the book Dwivedi also covers compliance, regulations and how they relate to storage. He shows how Sarbanes,HIPAA,G-LB, and CA SB1386 affect storage and storage security. He covers the main sections of each regulation and gives highlights about each, including common examples of what is affected. To help the reader further digest an otherwise difficult to comprehend subject, Dwivedi provides three case studies of how actual companies have secured their networked storage.

If you do any networked storage or securty I highly recommend this great security book as an addition to your referance library.

Well-written book, poor proofreading.......2005-12-25

Storage Security provides a very good overview and a good insight in the world of storage security and its possible pitfalls.

The book starts off with a global introduction on security concepts, a description of what is going to be covered in the remainder of the book, as well as a Q&A of real-life questions, which might contain too many new concepts to fully appreciate. After that, each chapter describes a set of architecture-specific attacks (i.e. attacks which focus only on FC, CIFS, NFS, iSCSI), and tries to position the attacks in a Security Business Risk (SBR) matrix. The description of the attacks is done in a fairly modular setup, which enforces the idea of the book being a reference as well as a book that can be read cover to cover.

The remainder of the book focuses not on the attacks but on the ways SANs and DAS can be protected, actual command line parameters for NetApp and Cisco boxes (which might serve as a handy reference for the NetApp and Cisco people among us), as well as several case studies.

The writer takes his time to explain intricate details of lesser known attacks and solutions, and covers all sorts of techniques that many system administrators might not be up to date with, such as zone hopping and E-port replication.

No book is perfect, and neither is this one. Among the things that bothered me the most while reading the book are:

- The number of typos in this book is incredible, making me wonder whether this book was proofread in the first place. For example, the paragraph on page 101/102 contains four typos alone:

* "to a greater degree that the" instead of "to a greater degree than the".
* "While this may seen to be" instead of "While this may seem to be".
* "sensitive application such as" instead of "sensitive applications such as".
* "should requite a higher degree" instead of "should require a higher degree of".

These are all fairly innocuous; the same cannot be said from writing down things like "Diffie-Hielman CHAP" (page 32).

- Please make sure that images meant to clarify difficult concepts (such as man-in-the-middle attacks using spoofed PLOGI frames and name server pollution), as well as the accompanying explanation, do not contain typos that complicate things even further. See page 67.

- Many people learn by repetition. However, explaning me how to change a node WWN 4 times with the same screenshots in a range of 50 pages might be a little too much repetition. The same goes for the explanation of the result (a possible denial-of-service attack), which is copied and pasted multiple times (see e.g. 79, 115, 119, 124).

- By the time I write this review, the web page mentioned on the back cover as well as on page 375 (http://www.isecpartners.com/securingstorage) is not online, which is a shame. It only takes 5 minutes to come up with a proper "This page is under construction, but for now take a look at the following interesting sites or articles" page.

- Stick to acronyms. If the acronym for port WWN is WWPN, don't change that into pWWN in the next chapter. It's not consistent, and might be confusing for people that are new to this (fascinating) area.

Overall, the book earns 4 stars. It fills a gap that needs to be filled, and does so with technical accuracy, good examples, clear writing style and screenshots that add to the understanding of the reader. The font and layout is well-chosen, so it shouldn't be a problem to read this book for hours on end if you would like so.

an unsettling text to some sysadmins.......2005-12-19

The theme of this book is that Storage Area Networks and Network Attached Storage have been hitherto neglected with respect to securing their contents against unauthorised use. Dwivedi remarks that most sysadmins focus on maintaining and securing a corporate firewall. Along with regularly patching users' machines plus web servers. A common attitude is that SAN and NAS devices are at the very heart of the corporate network, and often cannot be directly accessed from outside the firewall.

Dwivedi spends the bulk of his book debunking this idea. For one thing, he points out that a SAN or NAS box is a computer that has to run an operating system. Usually linux, unix or Microsoft. A vendor is very unlikely to write a custom operating system from scratch. Too expensive and takes too long to devise. So even if nothing else, you as a sysadmin should regularly patch those boxes if you can, when known bugs are found in their operating systems. These boxes should be no more exempt from patching than your other machines, even those behind the firewall.

Another cause of concern is the sheer mass of data on a SAN or NAS box. Nowadays, likely to be many gigabytes. These are high value targets for an attacker. Whereas a typical user's desktop would have much smaller data sets.

Plus, even with a firewall, there is always the possibility of an employee being an attacker. If she has a machine inside the firewall, then this already gives her a good start. Of course, you might reply that you "lock down" your users' machines, so that they cannot get root access, for example. But the attacker with a Microsoft machine could boot off a Knoppix CD, for example, and go into a linux that sits only in memory, and for which she has root. Suppose now you have a NAS box exporting a file system via NFS to the attacker's machine, which is normally running Microsoft Windows. The author shows how the attacker can from her Knoppix OS mount the NAS file system and by changing her local passwd file, assume any user id and group id that gives her read access (and maybe write access) to any file in the foreign file system.

These are the sort of attacks that you have to guard against. The book offers several chapters at its end describing possible countermeasures. The tone of the book is not alarmist. Rather, Dwivedi matter of factly walks through many attacks; the above being just one case. He shows how using open source code freely available on the net, that an attacker could gleam useful data from your machines.

Average customer rating:

Fibre Channel Storage Area Networks
The Fibre Channel Association
Manufacturer: Newnes
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Storage Area Networks for Dummies

ASIN: 1878707973

Book Description

The Fibre Channel Association is a group of companies involved in developing devices and technologies used with Fibre Channel, a very high-speed bus technology capable of bi-directional data transfer at rates in excess of one gigabit per second.

Describes how to use Fibre Channel technology to connect between storage devices and network servers for maximum data transfer
Authoring association is a group of companies involved in developing devices and technologies used with Fibre Channel
Discuses cutting edge technology capable of bi-directional data transfer at rates in excess of one gigabit per second

Getting Started With the IBM 2109 M12 Ficon Director (IBM Redbooks)

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Getting Started With the IBM 2109 M12 Ficon Director (IBM Redbooks)
Bill White , Wolfgang Fries , and Manfred Lindenau
Manufacturer: IBM.Com/Redbooks
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0738499390

INRANGE ENABLES LONG DISTANCE SANS W/ FIBRE CHANNEL OVER WAN.(Company Business and Marketing): An article from: Networks Update

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INRANGE ENABLES LONG DISTANCE SANS W/ FIBRE CHANNEL OVER WAN.(Company Business and Marketing): An article from: Networks Update

Manufacturer: Worldwide Videotex
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

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Book Description

This digital document is an article from Networks Update, published by Worldwide Videotex on July 1, 2001. The length of the article is 645 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: INRANGE ENABLES LONG DISTANCE SANS W/ FIBRE CHANNEL OVER WAN.(Company Business and Marketing)
Publication: Networks Update (Newsletter)
Date: July 1, 2001
Publisher: Worldwide Videotex
Volume: 13 Issue: 7 Page: NA

Distributed by Thomson Gale

Getting Started With the McData Intrepid Ficon Director (Redbooks)

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Getting Started With the McData Intrepid Ficon Director (Redbooks)
IBM Redbooks , Bill White , Wolfgang Fries , and Manfred Lindenau
Manufacturer: IBM.Com/Redbooks
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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General | Computers & Internet | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0738428426

Engenio 4-Gigabit Fibre Channel SAN technology featured in Supercomputing 2004 demo.(Storage Area Network, Engenio Information Technologies Inc.): An article from: EDP Weekly's IT Monitor

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Engenio 4-Gigabit Fibre Channel SAN technology featured in Supercomputing 2004 demo.(Storage Area Network, Engenio Information Technologies Inc.): An article from: EDP Weekly's IT Monitor

Manufacturer: Millin Publishing, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

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Book Description

This digital document is an article from EDP Weekly's IT Monitor, published by Millin Publishing, Inc. on November 8, 2004. The length of the article is 474 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Engenio 4-Gigabit Fibre Channel SAN technology featured in Supercomputing 2004 demo.(Storage Area Network, Engenio Information Technologies Inc.)
Publication: EDP Weekly's IT Monitor (Magazine/Journal)
Date: November 8, 2004
Publisher: Millin Publishing, Inc.
Volume: 45 Issue: 44 Page: 3

Distributed by Thomson Gale

Implementing the Cisco Mds 9000 in an Intermix Fcp, Fcip, And Ficon Environment (IBM Redbooks)

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Implementing the Cisco Mds 9000 in an Intermix Fcp, Fcip, And Ficon Environment (IBM Redbooks)
IBM Redbooks
Manufacturer: IBM.Com/Redbooks
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0738490962

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