Storage - NAS Vs SAN

What’s the Diff: NAS vs SAN
November 27, 2018by Roderick Bauer// 12 Comments
Both network-attached storage (NAS) and storage area network (SAN) were
developed to solve the problem of making stored data available to a lot of users at
once. Each of them provides dedicated storage for a group of users, but they couldn’t
be more different in their approach to achieving their mission.
A NAS is a single storage device that serves files over Ethernet and is relatively
inexpensive and easy to set up, while a SAN is a tightly coupled network of multiple
devices that work with block-based data and is more expensive and complex to set up
and manage. From a user perspective, the biggest difference between NAS and SAN
is that NAS devices look like volumes on a file server and use protocols like NFS and
SMB/CIFS, while SAN-connected disks appear to the user as local drives.
We provide an overview of the differences between NAS and SAN below. We’ll also
briefly cover solutions that combine NAS and SAN and offer many of the advanced
benefits of SAN without its high cost.
Basic Definitions — What is NAS?

A NAS is a computer connected to a network that provides file-based data storage
services to other devices on the network. The primary strength of NAS is how simple
it is to set up and deploy. NAS volumes appear to the user as network mounted
volume. The files to be served are typically contained on one or more storage drives,
often arranged into logical, redundant storage containers or RAID. The device itself is
a network node, much like computers and other TCP/IP devices, all of which maintain
their own IP address and can effectively communicate with other networked devices.
Although a NAS is usually not designed to be a general-purpose server, NAS vendors
and third parties are increasingly offering other software to provide server-like
functionality on a NAS.
NAS devices offer an easy way for multiple users in diverse locations to access data,
which is valuable when uses are collaborating on projects or sharing information.
NAS provides good access controls and security to support collaboration, while also
enabling someone who is not an IT professional to administer and manage access to
the data. It also offers good fundamental data security through the use of redundant
data structures — often RAID — and automatic backup services to local devices and
to the cloud.
Benefits of NAS
A NAS is frequently the next step up for a home office or small business that is using
DAS (direct attached storage). The move up to NAS results from the desire to share
files locally and remotely, having files available 24/7, data redundancy, the ability to
replace and upgrade hard drives in the system, and and the availability of other
services such as automatic backup.
Summary of NAS Benefits

 Relatively inexpensive
 24/7 and remote data availability
 Good expandability
 Redundant storage architecture
 Automatic backups to other devices and cloud
 Flexibility
NAS with eight drive bays for 3.5″ disk drives
Limitations of NAS
The weaknesses of a NAS are related to scale and performance. As more users need
access, the server might not be able to keep up and could require the addition of more
server horsepower. The other weakness is related to the nature of Ethernet itself. By
design, Ethernet transfers data from one place to another via packets, dividing the
source into a number of segments and sending them along to their destination. Any of
those packets could be delayed, or sent out of order, and might not be available to the
user until all of the packets arrive and are put back in order.
Any latency (slow or retried connections) is usually not noticed by users for small
files, but can be a major problem in demanding environments such as video
production, where files are extremely large and latency of more than a few
milliseconds can disrupt production steps such as rendering.
Basic Definitions — What is SAN?

A SAN is a way to provide users shared access to consolidated, block level data
storage, even allowing multiple clients to access files at the same time with very high
performance. A SAN enhances the accessibility of storage devices such as disk arrays
and tape libraries by making them appear to users as if they were external hard drives
on their local system. By providing a separate storage-based network for block data
access over high-speed Fibre Channel, and avoiding the limitations of TCP/IP
protocols and local area network congestion, a SAN provides the highest access speed
available for media and mission critical stored data.
SAN connecting yellow storage devices with orange servers via purple Fibre Channel switches
Benefits of SAN
Because it’s considerably more complex and expensive than NAS, SAN is typically
used by large corporations and requires administration by an IT staff. For some
applications, such as video editing, it’s especially desirable due to its high speed and
low latency. Video editing requires fair and prioritized bandwidth usage across the
network, which is an advantage of SAN.
A primary strength of a SAN is that all of the file access negotiation happens over
Ethernet while the files are served via extremely high speed Fibre Channel, which
translates to very snappy performance on the client workstations, even for very large
files. For this reason SAN is widely used today in collaborative video editing
environments.
Summary of SAN Benefits

 Extremely fast data access
 Dedicated network for storage relieves stress on LAN
 Highly expandable
 OS level (block level) access to files
 High quality-of-service for demanding applications such as video editing
Limitations of SAN
The challenge of SAN can be summed up in its cost and administration requirements
— having to dedicate and maintain both a separate Ethernet network for metadata file
requests and implement a Fibre Channel network can be a considerable investment.
That being said, SANs are really the only way to provide very fast data access for a
large number of users that also can scale to supporting hundreds of users at the same
time.
What’s the Diff: NAS vs SAN

NAS SAN
Typically used in homes and small to medium sized Typically used in professional and enterprise
businesses. environments.
Less expensive More expensive
Easier to manage Requires more administration
Data accessed as if it were a network-attached drive Servers access data as if it were a local hard drive
(files) (blocks)
Speed dependent on local TCP/IP usually Ethernet High speed using Fibre Channel, 2 gigabits to 128
network, typically 100 megabits to one gigabit per gigabits per second. Some SANs use iSCSI as a less
second. Generally slower throughput and higher expensive but slower alternative to Fibre Channel.
latency due to slower file system layer.

I/O protocols: NFS, SMB/CIFS, HTTP SCSI, iSCSI, FCoE
Lower-end not highly scalable; high-end NAS scale to Network architecture enables admins to scale both
petabytes using clusters or scale-out nodes performance and capacity as needed

Does not work with virtualization Works with virtualization
Requires no architectural changes Requires architectural changes
Entry level systems often have a single point of failure, Fault tolerant network with redundant functionality
e.g. power supply

Susceptible to network bottlenecks Not affected by network traffic bottlenecks.
Simultaneous access to cache, benefiting applications
such as video editing.

File backups and snapshots economical and Block backups and mirrors require more storage.
schedulable.
NAS/SAN Convergence
The benefits of SAN are motivating some vendors to offer SAN-like products at lower
cost chiefly by avoiding the high expense of Fibre Channel networking. This has
resulted in a partial convergence of NAS and SAN approaches to network storage at a
lower cost than purely SAN.
One example is Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), which supports block level
transfers over standard LAN at speeds of 10GB/sec+. For smaller deployments, iSCSI
is even less expensive, allowing SCSI commands to be sent inside of IP packets on a
LAN. Both of these approaches avoid expensive Fibre Channel completely, resulting
in slower, but less expensive ways to get the block level access and other benefits of a
SAN.

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What is the difference between NAS and SAN?

What are some benefits of NAS?

What’s the Diff: NAS vs SAN

November 27, 2018by Roderick Bauer// 12 Comments

Basic Definitions — What is NAS?

Summary of NAS Benefits

Basic Definitions — What is SAN?

Summary of SAN Benefits

What’s the Diff: NAS vs SAN

latency due to slower file system layer.

petabytes using clusters or scale-out nodes performance and capacity as needed

e.g. power supply

such as video editing.

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