DAS, NAS, SAN? You know what they are, but how about a guide to knowing what's what? This Fast Reference gives the key points to each storage technology--including the pros and cons.
Type of Storage
|
Pros
|
Cons
|
General use
|
Direct-attached storage (DAS)
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- Simple
- Low starting cost
- Easy to use
|
- Needs separate storage for each server
- Not easy to transfer data in network
- Server takes application processing load
|
- Data and application sharing
- Data backup
- Archiving
|
Disk library
|
- Fast
- High storage capacity
- High data availability
|
- Not as easily accessible as DAS
- Intended for write once, read rarely info
|
- Disk-to-disk backup
- Archiving
- Near line storage
|
Magnetic tape
|
- Low cost per megabite
- Portable
- Unlimited capacity (with multiple tapes)
|
- Inconvienient for fast recovery of individual or group files
|
- Archiving
- Limited-budget businesses
- Offsite storage
|
Network-attached storage (NAS)
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- Fast file access for multiple clients
- Ease of data sharing
- High storage capacity
- Redundancy
- Ease of drive mirroring
- Consolidated resources
|
- Less convienient than SAN for moving large blocks of data
|
- Backup
- Archiving
- Redundant storage
|
Redundant array of independent disks (RAID)
|
- Fast
- High storage capacity
- High data availability
- Reliable
- Security
- Fault tolerance
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- Possible false sense of security
- Some recovery difficulty on some systems
- High cost for optimum systems
|
- Swap files
- Internet service providers
- Redundant storage
|
Storage area network (SAN)
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- Excellent for moving large blocks of data
- Exceptional reliability
- Easily availible
- Fault tolerance
- Scalability
|
- Expensive
- Lack of standardization
- Management complexity
|
- Large databases
- Bandwith-intensive applications
- Mission-critical applications
|
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