Storage Networking Architectures
Comparing Solutions
Comparing Solutions: Features
NAS appliance FC SAN
Performance
Can be limited by LAN Storage does not
bandwidth compete with LAN traffic
Capacity scaling might Servers and storage can
Scalability
require multiple NAS servers scale independently
Availability
Built-in RAID, redundant Synchronous disaster-
network ports, snapshots tolerant configurations
Management
Ease of individual appliance Requires specialized skill
management set
Cross-platform
Built-in heterogeneous Heterogeneous platform
support
platform support support is not yet mature
Most common
Client/server file storage Database applications
usage
File Sharing
Lower start-up costs, low Higher start-up costs;
Cost
management costs management costs vary
Storage
File I/O Block I/O
Access
Comparing the features of NAS and SAN:
Both NAS and SAN can offer increased performance over DAS, but the
performance of NAS can be limited by LAN bandwidth constraints.
Both NAS and SAN are far more scalable than DAS. SANs allow servers
and storage to scale independently, while NAS devices incorporate a
thin server.
Both NAS and SAN provide greater reliability than DAS, but SANs can
provide the highest levels of availability by enabling server clustering
and disaster-tolerant configurations without sacrificing performance.
Both NAS and SAN can dramatically reduce storage management costs,
but NAS is generally easier to install and manage each appliance
individually.