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:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 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 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 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 -- TriLUG mailing list : http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug TriLUG Organizational FAQ : http://trilug.org/faq/ TriLUG Member Services FAQ : http://members.trilug.org/services_faq/ TriLUG PGP Keyring : http://trilug.org/~chrish/trilug.asc -- TriLUG mailing list : http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug TriLUG Organizational FAQ : http://trilug.org/faq/ TriLUG Member Services FAQ : http://members.trilug.org/services_faq/ TriLUG PGP Keyring : http://trilug.org/~chrish/trilug.asc
