Mohave County, Ariz., faced a classic one-two storage punch: The local government was running out of capacity, but it had only a limited budget for acquiring new gear.

"We started running out of disk on our server-attached storage," said Nathan McDaniel, the county's network services manager. "We use Dell servers, and we bought them with as much disk as we thought adequate. But eventually that would be outgrown."

The county sought to migrate from direct-attached to network-based storage, but it lacked the dollars for a big-ticket purchase. And McDaniel was wary of inexpensive storage-area networks (SANs) based on Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (ATA) drives. "That's not what I consider enterprise class," he said.

Instead, Mohave County opted for a Fibre Channel SAN from Xiotech. Although the SAN significantly exceeded the county's initial $40,000 budget, McDaniel considers it a solid investment because of its performance. The county bought the SAN with 4 terabytes of capacity but has since upgraded it to more than 10 terabytes.

Fibre Channel SANs have become a viable option for small to midsize customers such as Mohave County. Many observers had considered SAN technology to be too expensive and complicated for all but the largest and most sophisticated customers. But a drop in Fibre Channel component pricing has enabled vendors to offer products to a broader customer base. Vendors have also simplified their Fibre Channel offerings, which has contributed to the increase in demand at the lower end of the market.

The reconstituted Fibre Channel SANs, however, aren't suited to every customer. IP-based SANs, typically equipped with Serial ATA drives, are still less expensive than Fibre Channel, even with that technology's price reduction. IP SANs also allow buyers to make use of their existing Ethernet infrastructure and networking staff.

But for customers looking for performance, Fibre Channel may be the way to go, some industry executives say. "The move toward Fibre Channel is to have the best of both worlds," said Robyn Danz, a storage specialist at CDW Government, noting the technology's combination of performance and lower prices.