Feb 10
NAS storage — Common questions answered
Are you looking to buy the best NAS system? Are questions about RAID arrays, iSCSI, network attached storage, virtualization, and much more running through your head?
While technology has progressed leaps and bounds, the world of NAS storage is still relatively mysterious for many users. After all, when you throw in acronyms like SAN, iSCSI, NAS, FCoE, wireless networking, shared NFS mounting points — each with its configuration options — it can get pretty confusing!
Here we will take you through some of the most common NAS storage questions.
We won’t go into many details, but hopefully, it will give you some idea if you are a complete newbie.
What is NAS storage RAID configuration?
RAID is one of the essential parts of storage systems. It stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks. This is a way of storing data in two or more hard drives that work together to store files, images, videos, and other data. There are many different types of RAID configurations that can be used with NAS storage.
Most home use Network Attached Storage drives are configured as RAID 1, which means they keep a mirrored copy of your data. This is great because if something ever happens to the first drive, the second drive will still have your data on it. Other RAID configurations include RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, and RAID 10, also known as RAIS 1+0. Read here for more information on StoneFly’s SSO RAID enterprise NAS storage.
NAS storage virtualization
Network Attached Storage (NAS) virtualization is presented as an additional solution to facilitate file-level storage. The technology itself creates a virtual NAS to create multiple NAS instances in one physical box to help companies expand their storage capacity. This also provides organizations faster access to their data and reduces configuration time, telecom costs, and power consumption.
SMB CIFS file system
CIFS is a native Windows 2000 file-sharing protocol. This protocol allows programs to request files and services from remote computers over the Internet. CIFS employs the client/server, programming model. A client program requests a server program (usually on another computer) to access a file or send a message to the program running on the server computer. It is that simple.
The NFS file system
The Network File System or NFS is a set of networking protocols initially developed by Sun Microsystems. It has been implemented on a wide range of operating systems and allows clients to access files hosted on a server at a remote location. In short, it is used for sharing data between two or more computers over the network. It is commonly used when someone wants to access their enterprise NAS storage files remotely when they do not have physical access to the computer hosting the files.
Bottom Line
So, we hope that answers some of your questions and clears up some confusion regarding all the technical jargon. If you are interested, check out SSO NAS storage from StoneFly with AES 256-bit encryption, Deduplication, Sync/async multi-appliance/multi-site replication, and much more.
Meta Title: NAS storage — Common questions answered
Meta Description: SAN, iSCSI, NAS, FCoE, wireless networking, shared NFS mounting points — each with their configuration options — it can get pretty confusing! So here, we will take you through some of the most common NAS storage questions.
