There has been some argue for years about which sort of network storage is better to go. It will base on your environment similar to most computing decisions. Here shown the major differences between NAS and SAN network storage solutions.

NAS Network-Attached Storage

• NAS is a defined product that places between your application server and file system.

• A box that performs like a hard disk to network, as in actuality is a PC with hard disks and a network port that is already organized to perform like a file server.

• To user, file on remote PC could be utilized as if it were on local hard disk.

• About any machine that can attach to LAN can utilize NFS, CIFS or HTTP protocol to attach to a NAS and share files.

• NAS is inexpensive, but a slower solution that needs bandwidth on network for extra I/O.

SAN Storage Area Network

• SAN is a defined design that places between your file system and underlying physical storage.

• Generally installed because current or standard networks cannot hold necessities of particular applications, e.g. for bandwidth

• This permitted sharing of disk space amongst many PCs, which guide to good act and enabled more fault tolerant computing through use of server clusters.

• Just server class machines with SCSI Fibre Channel can attach to SAN. Fibre Channel of SAN has a boundary of around 10km

• SAN is costly, much quicker, but needs more maintenance. Every host system will have a special card that would be hooked up straight to a SAN or some sort of SAN Switch.

Types of networks supported

• NAS utilizes TCP/IP Networks: Ethernet, FDDI, ATM
• SAN utilizes Fiber Channel

The Protocols

• NAS utilizes TCP/IP and NFS/CIFS/HTTP
• SAN utilizes Encapsulated SCSI

NAS works best for these types of applications:

• File serving
• File sharing
• Users' home directories
• Content archiving
• Metadata directories
• E-mail repositories, such as enterprise .PST files
• GRID computing
• Peer-to-peer data sharing

SAN works best for these types of applications:

• Databases
• Server clustering
• Messaging applications
• Backup
• Data replication
• GRID computing
• Data warehousing
• Recovery archives
• Any application that requires low latency and high bandwidth for data movement.