Information Storage and Management

Book excerpt: The spiraling growth of digital information makes the ISM book a "must have" addition to your IT reference library. This exponential growth has driven information management technology to new levels of sophistication and complexity, exposing a skills gap that challenge IT managers and professionals alike. The ISM book, written by storage professionals from EMC Corporation, takes an ‘open’ approach to teaching information storage and management, focusing on concepts and principles – rather that product specifics – that can be applied in all IT environments The book enables existing and aspiring IT professionals, students, faculty, and those simply wishing to gain deeper insight to this emerging pillar of IT infrastructure to achieve a comprehensive understanding of all segments of information storage technology. Sixteen chapters are organized into four sections. Advanced topics build upon the topics learned in previous chapters. Section 1, "Information Storage and Management for Today’s World": Four chapters cover information growth and challenges, define a storage system and its environment, review the evolution of storage technology, and introduce intelligent storage systems. Section 2, "Storage Options and Protocols": Six chapters cover the SCSI and Fibre channel architecture, direct-attached storage (DAS), storage area networks (SANs), network-attached storage (NAS), Internet Protocol SAN (IP-SAN), content-addressed storage (CAS), and storage virtualization. Section 3, "Business Continuity and Replication": Four chapters introduce business continuity, backup and recovery, local data replication, and remote data replication. Section 4, "Security and Administration": Two chapters cover storage security and storage infrastructure monitoring and management. The book’s supplementary web site provides up-to-date information on additional learning aids and storage certification opportunities.