SAN vs NAS

SAN vs NAS

1. Typically used in homes and small to medium sized businesses.

2. Less expensive.

3. Easier to manage.

4. Data accessed as if it were a network-attached drive.

5. Speed dependent on local TCP/IP usually Ethernet network, typically 100 megabits to one gigabit per second. Generally slower throughput and higher latency due to slower file system layer.

6. I/O protocols: NFS, SMB/CIFS, HTTP

7. Lower-end not highly scalable; high-end NAS scale to petabytes using clusters or scale-out nodes

8. Does not work with virtualization

9. Requires no architectural changes

10. Entry level systems often have a single point of failure, e.g. power supply

11. Susceptible to network bottlenecks

12. File backups and snapshots economical and schedulable.

13. Typically used in professional and enterprise environments.

14. More expensive

15. Requires more administration

16. Servers access data as if it were a local hard drive (blocks)

17. High speed using Fibre Channel, 2 gigabits to 128 gigabits per second. Some SANs use iSCSI as a less expensive but slower alternative to Fibre Channel.

18. SCSI, iSCSI, FCoE

19. Network architecture enables admins to scale both performance and capacity as needed

20. Works with virtualization

21. Requires architectural changes

22. Fault tolerant network with redundant functionality

23. Not affected by network traffic bottlenecks. Simultaneous access to cache, benefiting applications such as video editing.

24. Block backups and mirrors require more storage.