Design and Implementation of a Smart Billing System Using IP-Based Storage Area Network with Automated Backup and Predictive Monitoring
Small shops and retail businesses usually depend on local computer storage to maintain billing records, invoices, and transaction history. These traditional systems suffer from several drawbacks such as:
- High risk of data loss during system crashes or hardware failures
- No centralized storage, making data management difficult
- Unreliable backups, as backups are often stored on the same local machine
- Limited storage scalability
- No fault tolerance for business-critical data
In addition to these limitations, cloud services and enterprise SAN servers are often too expensive for small businesses, as they involve high infrastructure cost, recurring subscription charges, and dependence on third-party service providers.
Since billing data directly affects business operations, these limitations pose a serious risk. Hence, a secure, centralized, scalable, reliable, and cost-effective storage solution is required.
This project implements a real IP-based Storage Area Network (IP-SAN) using the iSCSI protocol over TCP/IP and Ethernet to replace traditional local storage used in billing systems.
Instead of storing billing data on the local disk, all billing records, invoices, logs, and backups are stored on a SAN-mounted storage volume. The SAN appears as a local disk to the billing software but is physically a remote network-based block storage device.
All disk I/O operations are transmitted as SCSI commands encapsulated inside TCP/IP packets and transported over a standard Ethernet LAN, thereby achieving true network-based block storage.
SAN integration ensures:
- Data is independent of the billing PC
- Data remains safe even if the billing system crashes
- Storage can be expanded without modifying the application
- Backups happen directly to SAN
- Implemented CHAP Authentication and IPSec Tunneling between client and SAN Server.These two security layers ensured secure communication. Thus, SAN converts the billing system into a secure, enterprise-grade storage solution suitable even for small businesses.
- Smart invoice and bill generation
- Centralized billing data storage using SAN
- Network-based block storage access
- Automated SAN backups
- Manual on-demand backup & prediction
- SAN usage monitoring
- Future storage capacity prediction
- High availability and fault tolerance
- Secure network-based storage access
- Storage scalability without downtime
These SAN concepts are practically implemented as real working features in this project:
The project implements a fully IP-based SAN architecture using:
Ethernet → IP → TCP → iSCSI
- Linux system → SAN Target
- Windows billing system → SAN Initiator
- Storage accessed securely over a standard LAN
- Billing application runs on one system
- Storage runs on a separate SAN server
This ensures application processing and storage management are completely independent, improving reliability and performance.
All business data is stored in a single centralized SAN volume instead of on local disks. This enables:
- Central data management
- Consistent data access
- Easy scalability
All billing data is:
- Backed up directly to the SAN
- Independent of the billing computer’s local disk
- Secure from local hardware failures
This guarantees safe long-term data retention.
SAN communication uses TCP at the transport layer, ensuring:
- Reliable data delivery
- Correct data ordering
- Automatic retransmission on failure
This maintains data integrity.
The SAN runs entirely on standard Ethernet & IP networking:
- No Fibre Channel hardware
- No proprietary equipment
- Low-cost and easily deployable
The project uses iSCSI as the core storage protocol:
- Billing system → iSCSI Initiator
- SAN server → iSCSI Target
- Storage accessed using SCSI commands over IP
This SAN implementation is completely Fibre-Channel free and is built only using:
- Ethernet
- TCP/IP
- iSCSI
This proves that a low-cost IP-SAN can deliver enterprise-style centralized storage for small business applications like billing systems.
To ensure continuous data safety, the project implements a fully automated SAN backup system.
- A scheduled job runs every night automatically
- All billing data is:
- Copied from the application directory
- Directly stored on the SAN
- No manual interaction is required
- Ensures:
- Daily data protection
- Zero business data loss
This provides enterprise-level unattended backup automation.
In addition to automation, the system also provides a manual control button in the UI:
- When the button is clicked:
- Immediate backup is triggered to SAN
- Latest SAN usage is calculated
- Prediction algorithm is executed
- The user instantly receives:
- Backup confirmation
- Updated usage
- Predicted future storage level
This gives real-time administrative control along with automation.
Beyond storage and backup, the project implements an advanced SAN monitoring and prediction module.
- After each backup:
- Used space
- Total SAN capacity
- Timestamp
are recorded in a log file (CSV).
- This creates a historical usage dataset.
- A Python-based prediction engine analyzes the historical SAN usage data.
- Using linear regression, the system:
- Learns daily storage growth trend
- Predicts future SAN usage
- The system estimates:
- When the SAN will reach critical capacity thresholds
- How many days remain before storage is exhausted
After every backup, the system logs the used storage, total SAN capacity (20 GB), last backup status, and last prediction status. Using this historical data, the prediction module calculates the exact date on which 95% of the SAN disk (19 GB) will be reached and also displays the number of days remaining. For example, if the current usage is 11.5 GB, the system predicts that 95% capacity will be reached by 25-Nov-2025 with 20 days remaining, while showing “Last Backup: Success” and “Last Prediction: Completed” in the dashboard. This enables administrators to expand SAN storage in advance and prevent backup or billing data loss.
Using prediction, the system enables:
- Early warning before storage becomes full
- Planned storage expansion
- Avoidance of backup failures
- Zero downtime due to storage exhaustion
This transforms the project from a reactive storage system into a proactive smart storage management system.
Smart-Billing-Software-using-SAN/
│
├── backend/ → Billing logic
├── frontend/ → User interface
├── backup/ → Automated SAN backup scripts
├── prediction/ → SAN usage prediction scripts
├── san-config/ → SAN setup & configuration
├── logs/ → SAN usage CSV logs
├── README.md
- Eliminates data loss due to local disk failures
- Enables centralized storage management
- Provides fault tolerance and fast recovery
- Supports seamless storage scalability
- Enables automated unattended backups
- Enables on-demand backup and prediction
- Allows future storage capacity planning
- Prevents unexpected SAN overflow or data loss
- Converts billing software into a Smart Storage-Aware System
The Smart Billing Software using SAN successfully demonstrates how enterprise Storage Area Network technology can be practically applied to real business applications.
By combining:
- Real IP-based SAN
- Automated nightly backups
- Manual backup & prediction control
- SAN usage monitoring
- Future storage capacity prediction
This project delivers a complete, intelligent, secure, scalable, and proactive storage-enabled billing system. It proves that even small businesses can benefit from enterprise-grade centralized storage and predictive storage management using a cost-effective IP-SAN solution.
This project is developed for academic and educational purposes.