Storage Networking Architectures
Network-Attached Storage
Limitations of NAS:
Because hosts access NAS storage resources over the LAN, the LAN
can become a bottleneck. Even on a Gigabit Ethernet network, storage
traffic must compete with other data network traffic.
Most NAS appliances are optimized for file storage, and TCP/IP is not
optimized for block-level storage. NAS performance is often less robust
for applications that use block-level storage, such as databases,
although some vendors have introduced NAS products that are
optimized for databases.
The NAS server itself can become a bottleneck, although this can be
mitigated by designing the NAS device with more CPU power and/or a
TCP/IP accelerator.