SANs are primarily used to make storage devices, such as disk arrays, tape libraries, and optical jukeboxes, accessible to servera so that the devices appear like locally attached devices to the operating system. A SAN typically has its own network of storage devices that are generally not accessible through the local area network by other devices. The cost and complexity of SANs dropped in the early 2000s to levels allowing wider adoption across both enterprise and small to medium sized business environments.
NAS systems are networked appliances which contain one or more hard drives, often arranged into logical, redundant storage containers or RAID. Network-attached storage removes the responsibility of file serving from other servers on the network.
If you are interested in deploying, upgrading or managing storage solutions please contact our storage team at Storage@businessefficiencyonline.com so we can explore what you have now, what you want to achieve and your options for doing so within your business
An alternative to owning your own storage is Cloud-based or hosted storage connected to your own network via external Fibre-Chanel circuits.
This has the advantages of being stored off-site, and not needing the same level of in-house skills but does introduce a the network as an additional potential risk to Business Continuity and so it is vital that you fully understand the reliability and disater recovery options for your services.
