Islamic Republic of Afghanistan

Ministry of Higher Education

Lecture title: Storage technologies : 07

10/1/2022 1
 Windows storage technologies
• Navigating the storage landscape can be tricky – especially if you’ve never purchased storage at the
business level – or if your business storage needs have recently changed and you’re not sure what to do
next.
• Not sure where to begin, what the differences are, or even heard of the major storage architectures? What
are their benefits and tradeoffs?
• Three storage solutions:
• DAS (Direct Attached Storage)
• NAS (Network Attached Storage)
• SAN (Storage Area Networks)
• Which solution is suitable for you?
 Key criteria for choosing storage
• Capacity: How much data do you need to store?
• Scalability: How much data will you need to store 5 to 10 years from now?
• Reliability: Can your business survive without its data, files and applications? What would downtime do to
your business?
• Backup and Recovery: Where will you back up files and how often? What would happen if you lost files?
• Performance: How many employees need to share/access or collaborate on files, from where (remote or in-
house) and how often?
• Budget: How much do you have to spend?
• IT Staff and Resources: Do you have a dedicated IT staff person to manage your system?
Direct Attached Storage (DAS)
• Direct-attached storage is a fairly basic, low-maintenance, low-cost solution where the storage system is a
part of the actual host computer or connected directly to the host computer. This could be as simple as an
external hard drive and it’s the opposite of network storage, where workstations and servers connect
through a network.
• DAS is used in many IT infrastructures and larger DAS storage units can accommodate multiple disks in one
enclosure. However, for some business applications requiring greater flexibility and data-sharing across
teams, DAS’s ability to grow and scale is limited – especially if you expect to see a lot of business growth
over a short period of time.
Direct Attached Storage (DAS)…
• DAS is well suited for a small-to-medium sized business where sufficient amounts of storage can be
configured at a low startup cost.
DAS use case scenarios
• Best Use Case Scenario: DAS is ideal for small businesses that only need to share data locally, have a
defined, non-growth budget to work with and have little to no IT support to maintain a complex system.
• Worst Use Case Scenario: DAS is not a good choice for businesses that are growing quickly, need to scale
quickly, need to share across distance and collaborate or support a lot of system users and activity at once.
Features of DAS system
• A typical DAS system is made of a data storage device (for example enclosures holding a number of hard
disk drives) connected directly to a computer through a host bus adapter (HBA). Between those two points
there is no network device (like hub, switch, or router), and this is the main characteristic of DAS.

• The main protocols used for DAS connections are ATA, SATA, eSATA,NVMe, SCSI, SAS, USB, USB 3.0, IEEE
1394 and Fibre Channel.
Advantages of DAS
• Simpler to setup and configure over NAS / SAN
• Cheaper than NAS / SAN
• Networks not necessary, doesn’t use IP addresses
• Faster, better performance and better latency over SAN / NAS
• Easier to deal with overall considering all things
Disadvantages of DAS
• Dedicated resource to a single computer
• No economies of scale in sharing the storage
• Can’t manage DAS via a network
• Requires a special hardware connection
Network attached storage (NAS)
• NAS is a file-level (as opposed to block-level) computer data storage server connected to a computer
network providing data access to a heterogeneous group of clients. Network-attached storage offers
dedicated file serving and sharing through a network. It increases performance and reliability.
Network attached storage (NAS)
• It is often manufactured as a computer appliance – a purpose-built specialized computer. This machine
removes the responsibility of file serving from other servers on the network.
• NAS storage is also a good solution for consolidating storage systems from DAS – plus, having one
centralized, shared storage system will save money in the long run, eliminate confusion and increase
reliability in case of system failure or an outage.
• NAS storage typically has a lower startup cost because the existing network can be used. This can be very
attractive to small-to-medium size businesses (NAS is known as a top choice for SMBs).
History of NAS
• 3Com was among the first firms to build a dedicated NAS for desktop operating systems. In 1980s 3Com's
3Server and 3+Share software was the first purpose-built server.
• In early 1990s, Auspex Systems was one of the first to develop a dedicated NFS server for use in the UNIX
market.
• Starting in the early 2000s, a series of startups emerged offering alternative solutions to single filer
solutions in the form of clustered NAS – Spinnaker Networks (acquired by NetApp in February 2004), Exanet
(acquired by Dell in February 2010), Gluster (acquired by RedHat in 2011), ONStor (acquired by LSI in 2009),
IBRIX (acquired by HP), Isilon (acquired by EMC – November 2010), PolyServe (acquired by HP in 2007), and
Panasas, to name a few.
• In 2009, NAS vendors (notably CTERA Networks and Netgear) began to introduce online backup solutions
integrated in their NAS appliances, for online disaster recovery.
NAS use cases
• Best Use Case Scenario: NAS is perfect for SMBs and organizations that need a minimal-maintenance,
reliable and flexible storage system that can quickly scale up as needed to accommodate new users or
growing data.
• Worst Use Case Scenario: Server-class devices at enterprise organizations that need to transfer block-level
data supported by a Fibre Channel connection may find that NAS can’t deliver everything that’s needed.
Maximum data transfer issues could be a problem with NAS.
Network protocols used to serve NAS
NAS uses file-based protocols such as NFS (popular on UNIX systems), SMB
(Server Message Block) (used with MS Windows systems), AFP (used with Apple
Macintosh computers), or NCP (used with OES and Novell NetWare). Following is
the list of network protocols that a NAS can use:
• Andrew File System (AFS)
• Apple Filing Protocol (AFP)
• Server Message Block (SMB)
• File Transfer Protocol (FTP)
• Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)
• Network File System (NFS)
• rsync
• SSH file transfer protocol (SFTP)
• Universal Plug and Play (UPnP)
Advantages of NAS
• Economical way to provide large storage to many persons or computers
• Several times easier to setup and configure versus SAN
• Easy way to provide RAID redundancy to mass amount of users
• Allows users permissions, folder privileges, restricted access to documents, etc
• Higher utilization of storage resources
Disadvantages of NAS
• Requires IP Address(es) and takes up network space
• Slower latency and potentially maximum data-transfer issues
• Performance can be affected by network status
Storage Area Network (SAN)
• A storage area network is a dedicated, high-performance storage system that transfers block-level data
between servers and storage devices.
• It offers the speed of DAS with the sharing, flexibility and reliability of NAS. In other words, a SAN is a
network attached storage device, that other computer connect to over a network, and can treat as an
“internal” or “directly attached” or “dedicated” hard drive.
• SAN primarily due to the larger initial investment and startup costs is used at enterprise-level, datacenter-
level, or virtual computing environments. Hence, SAN is used in medium-to-large size businesses. SANs
require an infrastructure consisting of SAN switches, disk controllers, HBAs (host bus adapters) and fibre
cables.
Storage Area Network (SAN)…
• SAN-based storage solutions provide the ability to share the storage arrays to multiple servers. This allows
you to configure the storage capacity as needed, usually by a dedicated SAN administrator.
• Higher levels of performance throughput are typical in a SAN environment, and data is highly available
through redundant disk controllers and drives.
SAN use cases
• Best Use Case Scenario: SAN is best for block-level data sharing of mission- critical files or applications at
data centers or large-scale enterprise organizations.
• Worst Use Case Scenario: SAN can be a significant investment and is a sophisticated solution that’s typically
reserved for serious large-scale computing needs. A small-to-midsize organization with a limited budget and
few IT staff or resources likely wouldn’t need SAN.
Advantages of SAN
• Economies of scale similar to that of of NAS
• Higher hardware utilization, similar to that of NAS
• Speed similar or comparable to DAS
• Allows virtual environments, cloud computing, etc.
Disadvantages of SAN
• Performance affected by other SAN users
• Performance limited by network if configured incorrectly
• Better performance will still be found using DAS hardware
• Requires multiple static IP Addresses
• Generally consumes more IP addresses than NAS devices
• Complex networking planning is necessary
• May want to implement virtual networks / different subnets
• Physical network wiring may affect performance
• Physical network wiring should be thoroughly planned
• Generally more expensive than NAS or DAS
DAS vs. NAS vs. SAN
Fastest Slower Fast
Less reliable More reliable More reliable
Not flexible More flexible More flexible
Less utilization Better utilization Better utilization
Cheapest Cheap Expensive
Small and medium orgs Small and medium orgs Medium and large orgs
Don’t use network Use network Use network
Simplest Simpler Complicated
Block-level file transfer File-level file transfer Block-level file transfer