Storage area networks support which type of storage?

Storage area networks (SANs) primarily support block storage. This type of storage organizes data into fixed-size blocks, which allows for efficient data storage and retrieval. In a SAN environment, devices such as servers and storage arrays connect over a high-speed network and operate at the block level, enabling high-performance and low-latency access to storage resources.

Block storage is particularly advantageous for applications that require fast access times and high IOPS (Input/Output Operations Per Second), such as databases and transactional systems. This is because with block storage, any server can access the storage directly and pretend it’s a local drive, thereby optimizing speed and performance.

While file and object storage are also important storage types, they are utilized in different contexts and typically utilize different architectures. File storage (such as that used in Network Attached Storage, or NAS) organizes data in a hierarchical structure, making it suitable for unstructured data like multimedia files. Object storage is more suited for large-scale applications needing scalability and data management, commonly used for cloud storage services. However, neither of these is what SANs primarily provide, thus reinforcing the correctness of block storage as the answer.