I know it has been awhile yet again since my last post but I have been eyeball deep in a SQL scripting project for school. Great news is that I am done with it and am that much closer to finishing the Bachelors program. In this post I want to talk about something I am working on this week for an undisclosed project. Hopefully I can reveal more details after next week but for now here is a simple explanation of the difference between SAN and NAS.
Storage Area Networks (SANs) provides a networked storage solution by networking multiple devices operating on disk blocks. A SAN commonly utilizes Fibre Channel interconnects. SANs are typically implemented in larger enterprise networks that require many terabytes of centralized file storage or very high speed file transfer operations. A single SAN containing a high-performance disk array provides scalability and performance.
Network Attached Storage (NAS) is simply a single storage device that operates on data files. It is typically connect through Ethernet and TCP/IP connections. A NAS is connected to the LAN and maintains its own IP address comparable to the other devices on the network. Through the use of a software program automatic or manual back ups are file copies are performed. Additional storage can be implemented through the installation of more NAS units, although each one operates independently.
So what does that mean for you? It means that if you are a home user backing up your photos or maybe trying to share movies and music with other devices in your home then you need a NAS. If you are a multi-billion dollar company that moves and stores massive amounts of data then you need a SAN solution and I suggest contacting NetApp to answer any questions you might have.
