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Rating: 
Summary: If you need to understand Storage Area Networks...
Review: ... then don't go any further than this book! It contains everything you need to avoid the pitfalls that may occur when deploying such a nascent technology. If you're thinking about your first SAN, or you want some tips on making better use of your current SANs, you need this book. Excellent!
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Primer
Review: As a storage novice coming at storage with a networking background, I found this book to be an excellent introduction to storage. The book is particularly effective at illustrating how intertwined storage infrastructure can be (you can solve the exact same problem with fundamentally different approaches - application, volume, array-based solutions). Networking is relatively straightforward by comparison.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Primer
Review: As a storage novice coming at storage with a networking background, I found this book to be an excellent introduction to storage. The book is particularly effective at illustrating how intertwined storage infrastructure can be (you can solve the exact same problem with fundamentally different approaches - application, volume, array-based solutions). Networking is relatively straightforward by comparison.
Rating: 
Summary: Informative, but a bit dry
Review: Barker and Massiglia have come up with that rare beast in this book: something which is so informative you dare not put it down, but on a topic that is so boring that you dare not pick it up. I tend not to build that many SANs these days, and restrict myself to maybe 30 a week or fewer, but I still find that this is enough to make me want not to think about them outside of this. If you buy this, make sure it's bacuse you enjoy building SANs.
Rating:
Summary: Informative, but a bit dry
Review: Barker and Massiglia have come up with that rare beast in this book: something which is so informative you dare not put it down, but on a topic that is so boring that you dare not pick it up. I tend not to build that many SANs these days, and restrict myself to maybe 30 a week or fewer, but I still find that this is enough to make me want not to think about them outside of this. If you buy this, make sure it's bacuse you enjoy building SANs.
Rating: 
Summary: good TOC but no content
Review: I bought this book because I needed to figure out what problems SAN can solve for me, and how exactly to solve them in a cost-effective way using products available today. I found no answers to my questions in this book. The table of contents lists all the important topics, but the content is, well ... missing. What you find there is "general concepts" that you probably already know. This is not a book for enginners or system designers. It is probably good enough for a sales person or an IT/PR type. She can pick all the right buzz words from the book but will know no meaning of them. Needless to say, I returned the book. I still give it one star because it is well manufactured and has good illustrations - a lot of work must have gone into it.
Rating:
Summary: A great reference book
Review: Reading this book I have learned as much on file system, volume management, database I/O as I have learned on SAN. It gave me a better understanding of the storage problem I was trying to solve and great pointers on the pitfalls to avoid and where focus should be when building a SAN. A "must have".
Rating:
Summary: SANs solve business IT problems
Review: Students and professionals, alike, will appreciate this book, as it is comprehensive and written and designed in a user friendly format. It features an extensive dictionary that allows for easy access to the terminologies surrounding SAN. There are other books that talk a lot about building infrastructure, but this one provides the most complete coverage of what is needed to use SANs to solve business IT problems. Although the book is quite terse on wires and protocols, I was pleased to see which business applications were sensible for use with SANs. Good information on benefits, killer applications, software architectures and requirements, implementation and management. I would also recommend "Blueprints for High Availability" by Evan Marcus (with Hal Stern)
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