Performance Support

Storage: Comparison of SAN and NAS

Transcript
Lets discuss the similarities and differences between SAN and NAS. First at the device level, SAN storage devices and NAS storage devices are similar and that they're both effectively standalone purpose built computer systems consisting of a processing component and an array of dis! drives. "oth SAN and NAS devices are used to centrali#e and share storage among multiple heterogeneous computer systems and both promise reduced and centrali#ed storage administration. Note that $'m specifically tal!ing about the storage devices. Let me clarify, when we spea! of SAN at a higher level, the storage area networ! is not %ust a storage device but its the actual networ!ing component that allows the SAN storage devices to communicate to the computers and to each other. &his is a ma%or difference between SAN and NAS since NAS devices simply connect to e'isting &()*$) networ!s much li!e )(s and servers do. So this added level of infrastructure and comple'ity is one of the big differences between SAN and NAS. +ne leverages the e'isting Local Area Networ! while the other re,uires its own dedicated networ!. Another difference is that SAN storage is accessed at the bloc! level and NAS devices are accessed at the file level. "loc! level access for SAN allows the computers connected to the SAN storage to access the storage directly as if the storage were locally attached. &he server operating system sees the SAN storage as local dis! %ust as if it were physically installed in the computer itself. File level access for NAS devices is presented differently. &he NAS storage is presented to a computer or server on the networ! by means of a file sharing protocol and the server operating system sees the storage as a shared file location on the networ!. )rotocols li!e NFS and ($FSs are used to share storage on the networ!. SAN storage accesses the dis! at a bloc! level and is presented %ust as if it were local dis! to the +S as we see on the left hand side of the screen. NAS storage is accessed at the file level and the dis! is presented as if it were file share on the networ! as displayed in the right hand side. So when would one choose to implement one over the other- .ell that really depends on many factors that are beyond the scope of this discussion, but as a general rule of thumb if SAN or NAS are already deployed and meet the basic needs including cost then it might be best to grow the current deployment rather than implement another solution. $f neither SAN or NAS are already in place NAS might be better suited in a situation where there are a group of computers that need to share storage files over the networ!. SAN might be best suited in scenarios where multiple application servers re,uire access to shared storage for large amounts of data and*or high performance needs for e'ample database servers. $ hope this helps distinguish the similarities and differences between SAN and NAS. &han!s for watching.

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