Storage area networks (SAN) are a common storage architecture for businesses that need performance and storage space. A SAN connects servers to a range of block level storage called logical disk units (LUNs). There are several SAN protocols you can use, below is a list of them and a brief description.
- Fibre Channel Protocol (FCP)FCP is the most commonly used SAN protocol. It used Fibre Channel transport protocols combined with SCSI commands.
- iSCSI
The second most used SAN puts SCSI commands inside Ethernet frame transports them over IP Ethernet
- Fibre Channel over Internet
This protocol is similar to iSCSI in that it puts Fibre Channel inside Ethernet and uses an IP Ethernet network for transport.
- NVMe
The NVMe protocol for accessing flash storage via PCIe. This protocol supports thousands of parallel ques which lends its ability to support thousands of commands.