Need basic info on NAS

[mkirros]

We're looking at adding a NAS appliance to increase our storage capacity. I have no experience with NAS and want to make sure that it will meet our needs before spending any money. Does anyone know of a good basic discussion of NAS that would give me an introduction and possibly point me toward some additional resources? I have some time to look into this before we'd be buying anything, so long, detailed information is not a problem. Thanks.

 

[comtec17]

NAS = Network Attached Storage.

Leverages existing Network and used for CIFS or NFS.

File level not block level like a SAN or iSCSI LUN.

Think of a NAS appliance much like a mini-fileserver sharing data.

There are many areas to look for information on NAS. A simple google search will turn up non-stop information. You can also go to SNIA

http://www.snia.org

, or any vendor website such as Network Appliance or EMC.

 

[clonny2]

The best questions to be asking are what are your needs?

Central File Serving? IF so, what protocols need to be supported? HTTP? NFS? FTP? SMB/CIFS? RSYNC? How much storage do you need? Is the server expandible to add more storage capacity if you need?

Is the server going to be dedicated backend storage for another server through some mount of smb or nfs or using iscsi?

How does this server fit into your Disaster Recovery Scenario? Incluiding backup of the data?

Is the server going to be your backup server?


To best evauluate what kind of server you need, your first should figure out what you are trying to solve. There are lots of NAS servers out there all the way from the low-end to the enterprise level and pricing can easaily be over $100K or as low as $1000 or less maybe.