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Storage Area Network (SAN) is a technology which allows you to attach remote storage device to your server so that you can store your data/backup etc. on it.
Basically SAN is used as Backup Device.
This device device treated as locally attached device when you connect it to your server hence a can be termed as high speed shared storage device
SAN is a device which contain only a high volume disk to provide sharing.
Normally you get a part of disk space and a user account on SAN so that you can share/attach this disk on your own server using the user account created for you, this user account is something like a FTP account.
Here in this post I will provide all the possible steps and diagrams to configure a SAN partitions on your server,

Suppose you have following SAN details -
Device IP - 1.2.3.4
User - SANUSR
Password - SANPASS

now first of all you need to download and install Microsoft iSCSI Initiator on your server. You can download it at following link -
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=12cb3c1a-15d6-4585-b385-befd1319f825&displaylang=en

For 32bit machine downlaod the file Initiator-2.08-build3825-x86fre.exe and install it, its a straigh forward installation of few steps.
Installation will create a icon “Microsoft iSCSI Initiator”. Double click on it to open”, it will look like as :-

>> Click on “Discovery” tab,

>> Click on “Add”,

>> Enter IP address of SAN device and click “Advanced”

>> Enable check box for “CHAP logon information”, enter User name = SANUSR and Password = SANPASS >> OK >> Ok
Now again click on tab “Targets” which will look like as :-

Now select 1st target and click on “Log On”

>> Enable check box for “Automatically restore this connection when the system boots” >> click on “Advanced..” >> again at bottom enable check box for “CHAP Logon information” >> enter user = SANUSR and password = SANPASS and hit Ok >> Ok >> so that the status of Target will be changed to “Connected” it will look like as :-

>> Do the same thing for all Targets. Once all Targets are COnnected, you can view them under “Disk Management” section of your server.
>> Assigh Drive Letters to all drives and now you can see all these new drives in your My Computer or Explorer
You can use these partitions for further storage and backup

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