Networks and Communications
Storage Area Networks and Network Attached Storage
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What is the Role of Storage Area Networks and Network Attached Storage?
The role of these technologies is to provide a shared storage solution for multiple devices across a network. However, this is achieved in different ways.
Storage Area Network (SAN)
A SAN is a group of storage devices that are pooled together in a network that appear as a single connected drive to the end user, holding the total capacity of those storage devices. The read/write operations to a SAN are handled by the OS of the device connected to the SAN.
Network Attached Storage (NAS)
A NAS is a standalone storage device that is connected to a network like any other node with its own IP address. Like a SAN, it appears as a single connected drive to the end user. It differs to a SAN in that the NAS device itself holds the storage space it makes available to the network, and it has its own OS that handles the read/write operations of data.