SAN Glossary

This is the main page for the Storage Area Networking (SAN) Glossary of terms. My intent is to define these terms in simple to understand words so that almost anyone can understand them. I will be adding definitions whenever I can, so check back every so often to see if anything new has been added.

I may throw in a few industry acronyms, just in case someone needs those defined too. Pronouncing these is usually the hard part (can you say “SCSI”?).

Please let me know if you have a particular term that you would like added by leaving a comment.

Thanks, Greg

List of Terms:

Asynchronous Event Notification (AEN)

Bits, Bytes, and Blocks

Contingent Allegiance Condition (CAC)

Disk-to-Disk Backup

Fibre Channel

Network Attached Storage (NAS)

Nexus

SATA – Serial ATA

SCSI