Define NAS

[jaksen112]

whats all the hoopla? we recently bought a Dell PE 725n with an attached powervault called a NAS, 6 months earlier we bought a power PE 2550 with attached powervault, but it wasnt called a NAS then. other then the flimsy windows powered OS and some management software that I cant find so useful, Whats the difference????

I mean all it really is, is a server with a big disk attached... right???

01110000

 

[clonny2]

jaksen121: NAS, in its simplest definition means Network Attached Storage. NAS is dedicated file serving / sharing.

Each NAS device will have different bells and whistles.

Dell uses Microsoft SAK, which is Windows 2000 + the SAK which turns it into a NAS device. Microsoft has web administration for most things and terminal administration for the remaining pieces the web ui can not do.

There are also other NAS vendors, ie Snap Appliance. Snap has easy to use webui, depending on your needs many different bells and whistles. Nowadays it seems there are more and more NAS devices coming into the market place. Sony, IOmega, Einux all have NAS servers as well.

Is it a server with a big disk attached. You could look at it like that. But there is lots more to NAS as well.

>---------------------------------------Lawrence Feldman
SR. QA. Engineer SNAP Appliance
lfeldman@snapappliance.com