Which technology is commonly used for high-speed storage area network connections?

Fiber Channel is widely recognized as a leading technology for high-speed storage area network (SAN) connections due to its high performance and reliability. It is specifically designed for storage networking, providing fast data transfer rates that can reach up to 32 Gbps or more in modern implementations. This speed is vital for environments that demand rapid access to large volumes of data, such as enterprise storage solutions, databases, and virtualized systems.

Fiber Channel's architecture is optimized to handle large amounts of data with low latency, making it suitable for applications that require quick read/write operations. Additionally, it supports long distances for connectivity, allowing for flexibility in data center designs and the ability to connect storage resources over significant distances without sacrificing performance.

In contrast, other technologies listed serve different purposes or do not offer the same high-speed capabilities. For example, iSCSI is based on Ethernet and can provide good performance but typically does not match the speeds achieved by Fiber Channel in high-demand SAN environments. NFS is a file-level file-sharing protocol and is more suitable for network-attached storage rather than dedicated high-speed SAN connections. SATA, widely used for direct-attached storage, focuses on lower-cost storage solutions and does not provide the high-speed performance required for SAN infrastructure.