NAS gains traction

Simplicity, expanded features and low costs spotlight network-attached storage.

Storage has emerged as a critical component of the enterprise infrastructure. With a direct impact on data accessibility, employee productivity and, at the extreme, disaster recovery, storage enables enterprises to leverage their information assets and benefit the bottom line. 

Direct-attached storage (DAS), network-attached storage (NAS) and storage area networks (SAN) are some of today’s more prevalent options. Enterprises often have a mixed storage environment, implementing the best solution for specific departments, workgroups and remote offices. NAS, with its reputation for simplicity and cost-effectiveness, has already solved many storage problems in the entry and midrange spaces. Now, rapid technological advancements, combined with economic factors, have led to a growing adoption of NAS in the enterprise. 

Comprised of hard disk storage and software, NAS is a special-purpose appliance dedicated to file serving. Traditionally, general-purpose servers had the dual responsibility of running software applications and serving files. This significantly drains server bandwidth, as two functions compete for the same processing resources. Users experience slowdowns when accessing files or running applications. NAS, by virtue of assuming the storage and file-serving functions from the server, provides maximum server efficiency, higher employee productivity and less downtime. 

NAS has evolved rapidly over the years to supply some of the technology features that SANs are known for, while retaining its trademark simplicity. With expanded functionality and features in areas such as data protection and availability, enterprises can now seriously look to NAS as a business-critical storage medium. 

With the economic slowdown in recent years, return on investment has resurfaced as a key deciding factor in technology purchases. Advances in disk drive technology have contributed to NAS advancement from a cost standpoint. Drives are dropping in price, but doubling in capacity roughly every 18 months. 

Today’s NAS systems can offer multiterabyte capacities in small form factors. This makes them a simple and cost-effective option compared to adding new servers, or enduring the long, involved process of expanding the capacity of existing servers. 

The simplicity of NAS is also a decision factor. Infrastructures are already complex enough, running multiple operating platforms on a variety of machines. NAS is designed to be simple on all fronts–easy to install, use, administer and manage. The less time IT managers spend getting systems installed, working and maintained, the more time they can devote to mission-critical tasks. 

NAS is designed for fast, reliable file serving across all platforms. It can integrate into any heterogeneous environment, whether it includes Linux or Solaris, Windows or Mac. Data availability features, once only reserved for higher-end storage, are now available with NAS. For example, most of today’s systems offer load balancing, which evenly distributes network traffic for optimal performance. NAS has also evolved to offer high reliability features, such as fully redundant, industry-standard components and RAID protection. 

Data protection capabilities are also of key importance to enterprises. Backup-and-recovery feature sets in the NAS realm have grown tremendously. Data backups can be used to restore corrupted or lost data, or recover entire systems and databases in the event of a disaster. 

NAS also offers “disk-to-disk” data-protection features, including replication (asynchronous) and mirroring (synchronous), which ensure business continuance. Data replication provides a backup for disasters and other major outages by storing copies of data on servers at remote locations. Mirroring duplicates data on separate disks in real time to ensure its continuous availability. 

While NAS offers increasingly sophisticated functionality, it remains rooted in simplicity–a non-disruptive technology that integrates seamlessly into the heterogeneous enterprise environment. As a special-purpose appliance, it serves files quickly and reliably, and safeguards the data entrusted to it. As storage requirements continue to grow, NAS should only continue to become more prevalent in the enterprise.

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Joe Disher is a storage industry veteran with more than a decade of experience developing new storage technologies. He currently serves as technical marketing manager for Snap Appliance.