NAS v Server

[technical1]

Hi All,
I was after some feedback from yourselves.
Im planning to buy a DL380 primarily to serve website images for my websites. The scenario would be up to 4 web servers accessing this DL380 for website images.

I was wondering, would it be better to purchase a NAS unit instead of the server, would there be a difference in performance??

Looked into SAN, but its too pricey to make the jump.

Regards,
Vinay

 

[clonny2]

It would depend on the NAS unit you bought. Some are more powerful than others. It would also depend on the protocol you are going to use to connect the NAS to the server.

In most cases NAS has a much lower TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) compared to a traditional server. Also, if you do not know how to maintain the server then you are going to have to hire contractor or permanent position to maintain the server.

There are lots of NAS vendors out there based on Windows SAK, linux, BSD, and proprietary OS.

Performance: Agains, depends on the NAS unit vs the server. I would make sure the you get dual GigE, and maybe looking at either bonding them or have the webserver point to 2 different network ip addresses to split the load.

On most cases I would say NAS is the way to go.

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