Storage Networking Architectures
Comparing Solutions
NAS provides better support for heterogeneous operating system
environments.
NAS is often the preferred solution for file-sharing applications, because
NAS appliances implement OS-independent file systems.
SANs are optimized for block-level traffic, so they are often the preferred
solution for databases. However, NAS vendors are beginning to find
ways to increase the performance of NAS solutions for database
applications.
NAS/SAN hybrid solutions are also available:
NAS heads provide a gateway to SAN-based storage resources.