[TriLUG] "basement" SAN

[Ryan Leathers]

I think the conventional wisdom these days Dan is that we have either file
level access or block level access being NAS and SAN respectively.  So for
example, while a Fiber Channel SAN clearly uses its own network you might
also have an iSCSI SAN which shares the same IP/GigE network used for all
sorts of other traffic.  SAN is less about the "dedicatedness" of the
network or protocol and more about the type of I/O - file or block.

A practical example might help...
A NAS might be selected for use by a mail server which needs tons of storage
but need not be fast.
A SAN might be selected for use by a database system where read/write speeed
is everything.


-----Original Message-----
From: Dan Monjar [mailto:dan at daijin.dissimulo.com]
Sent: Thursday, October 07, 2004 4:07 PM
To: Triangle Linux Users Group discussion list
Subject: Re: [TriLUG] "basement" SAN


--On Thursday, October 07, 2004 03:38:53 PM -0400 Dean Price 
<deano at price4.org> wrote:

> Does "Storage Area Network"
>
> used to be (and still does, dependant on who you talk to) called NAS
> "Network  Area Storage"
>

I've always considered them separate things... a NAS would be a dedicated 
box you put on your normal net while a SAN is storage with its own 
dedicated network to which the server attach.


-- 
Dan Monjar
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