Complete profiling of NAS pros and cons

In addition to the high performance, reliability, and scalability of an IT system, a business or company is designing its own IT systems, and IT system-related management costs are also to be considered. The famous 2/8 law shows us that the cost ratio of it setting and managing is 2:8. Therefore, enterprises in the construction of its own IT systems, has been pursuing the decline in management costs. NAS Formal Enterprise network users in the case of data access and storage requirements are not short, resulting in an easy to manage, low management cost of the optimal storage design.

NAS devices are actually part of the network. NAS devices can respond quickly to a variety of file operations on a network device, and file operations do not have to go through other servers, directly on client devices and NAS devices. In addition, NAS devices can run multiple file systems (NFS, CIFS, etc.) at the same time, and can also support UNIX, Linux, Windows and other operating systems. It can be said that NAS is to simplify the storage and management of file data generated. Here are some of the advantages and disadvantages of NAS to crack, hoping to bring you some help.

The benefits of NAS

Reduce server burdens. The purpose of a NAS device is to isolate the servers and storage in a network device and make the two independent. This makes it possible for servers (especially general-purpose servers) to have more computing resources to handle the user's various applications and services (such as email processing, remote applications, etc.). NAS is used to help the server complete the tasks of some files and I/O operations.

facilitate data sharing. As we all know, the current enterprise internal network is more and more huge, has formed a multiple operating system, the network equipment diverse complex network environment. NAS devices are designed for this diversity of environments, in addition to supporting multiple operating systems (Unix, Linux, Windows, and so on), as well as multiple network protocols (TCP/IP, etc.) that enable NAS to easily support data sharing between multiple systems ( Data transfer sharing between UNIX and Windows, between UNIX and Linux, and between Linux and Windows. End-customers are not allowed to know whether the data was originally on a UNIX system, on a Linux system, or on Windows.

Have a good adaptability to the existing network environment. NAS devices do not have any particular requirements or restrictions on the enterprise network environment, and it is easy to add NAS devices to the existing network environment. This is because the operating systems and network protocols supported by NAS are well supported in existing networks, and the addition of NAS devices does not raise the issue of new network support.

High scalability. The high scalability of NAS devices is good enough to meet the growing storage needs of the enterprise. The extension of NAS can be achieved simply by adding a node and network device (true Plug and Play and deployment location is very flexible), basically starting the NAS device, running the appropriate network file system, and adding the NAS device to the network environment. Advanced Nas is more able to support the network interface of the hot installation, the hard disk to increase at any time.

The current expansion trend of NAS has evolved into NAS clustering technology. NAS Cluster technology is formed as a NAS device through a set of NAS devices, NAS Clustering technology provides a certain amount of storage diversion, so that different NAS devices can work together to store the storage requirements of networked storage, thereby improving the overall performance of the NAS system as a whole, It also solves the problem of scalability and management complexity of multiple NAS systems.

Ease of management. NAS itself is designed for the enterprise internal network, the implementation of heterogeneous platform data sharing, so the use of NAS and maintenance costs are relatively low, management and maintenance work is relatively simple. The user needs some simple initial setup and management, and the NAS device can run well.

Disadvantages of NAS

Of course Nas is not perfect, and NAS devices also have some drawbacks. This is because the traditional TCP/IP protocol inevitably brings some "innate" drawbacks to NAS.

Limitations of storage performance. Although NAS is much better than traditional DAS devices in storage performance, it is only suitable for use in smaller networks or LANs. Because NAS is limited to the bandwidth of the corporate network, it is likely that Nas's performance is significantly degraded when multiple clients access the NAS file system, which ultimately does not meet the user's needs.

Reliability still needs to be improved. When the enterprise internal network develops to a certain scale, the data service and data management of the NAS equipment form the double burden of the network, that is, the NAS needs to do the backup and restore operation in addition to processing the normal terminal data I/O request. And the late expansion cost of NAS is high; general NAS does not have a highly available configuration and is prone to a single point of failure.

Summary: NAS systems have become more and more popular, the market has even emerged a dedicated to home users/soho users of the NAS system, the popularity of the network has created a brilliant NAS. An enterprise user who has a good analysis of its current IT environment and some of the advantages and disadvantages of NAS is bound to enable NAS devices to provide the best support for your business.