Storage consolidation allows you to bring many applications together to a single storage pool. It improves storage utilization, dramatically simplifies management, and increases reliability in well implemented SANs. While consolidation makes it easier to manage, provision, and backup your data, how do you manage different application service level requirements? There is much talk about "tiered storage" - doesn't that mean separating again what you just consolidated?

With EqualLogic's PS Series storage, administrators can configure separate storage pools within a single SAN to build the most efficient, flexible, and easy-to-manage environment. Using a 'SAN within a SAN," you gain the advantages of consolidation while retaining the ability to easily separate workloads as needed. This paper gives the details.