By Marc Farley
3 stars (out of 5)
This book is a broad overview of all things related to data storage:
- how disk drives work
- how file systems and drivers use disk drives
- direct attached storage (local disk drive)
- SCSI
- RAID
- NAS (network attached storage)
- SAN (storage area network)
- backups and tape technologies
With this much territory to cover, the author had to choose between writing an encyclopedia and keeping things high level. He opted for high level. The book is a good way to get started with these topics but it doesn't take you far enough to be practical. The author strives for vendor neutrality (and achieves it), but of course you can only use products from vendors. Getting a handle on any particular product should be easier once you've read this.
The ordering of the material is not the best. Of the topics covered, most people understand the file system best. This could have been used as the starting point to go deeper into what lays behind the file system. Unfortunately, the file system isn't really discussed until chapter 14.