Difference Between NAS and SAN

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kuroteckie

kuroteckie

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Good morning techies,

While searching on information about NAS devices, I came across a standard known as Storage Attached Network (SAN). While looking on information on SANs I seen that they were very similar in regards to the way they function with several drives on a network (since you can use bays with NASs). What is the difference between them in the way they are supposed to function? I really don't see a difference. Thanks in advance for any help offered
 
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kanewolf
iSCSI will map a volume on the NAS to a single host. A NAS can have multiple volumes. You don't have to make all the disks in a NAS into a single volume. In home situations, most of the time, a single volume is created with shares created at the directory level. That way you don't have to predefine size limits. If you create a 100GB volume on a NAS, it may be difficult to resize it to 200GB if you need more space.
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kanewolf

kanewolf

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SAN generally uses fiber channel or Infiniband for the interconnect. It is different protocol than ethernet but there are switches that support both. Unless you use a shared file system, SAN is a one host to one volume implementation. NAS is a shared access by default, either via NFS or CIFS.

SAN generally has a much higher cost than NAS but can have higher performance. I wouldn't recommend SAN for a home or small business environment.
 
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kuroteckie

kuroteckie

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I'm a little confused when you say "One Host to One Volume."

Do you mean that only one computer/host/node will be able to access a SAN unless file sharing is enabled?
 
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kanewolf

kanewolf

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A SAN is generally one or more disk controllers chassis connected to one or more switches. Those disk controllers have MANY disk volumes on them. A disk volume can be part of a physical disk to a multi-disk RAID volume. Each disk volume can only be access by one computer. The controller can be accessed by all computers connected to the switch but each disk volume is mounted and accessed on one computer.
 
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failboat

failboat

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SAN makes the storage work like it's local. You can install programs on it for example.

NAS storage is remote. Some programs will support saving files on the NAS, but it won't work like the SAN will.

SAN will be very complicated to setup. Basic VDI with low 2d and no 3d is easier to setup and use remote resources to run programs or OS.
 
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kuroteckie

kuroteckie

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So SANs are psudeo physical drive (having the computer think it has drives on it physically) while NASs are logical? (appear on the computer but's its on a network)
 
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kanewolf

kanewolf

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That is a pretty good summary. It is possible to make ethernet connected drives appear as local using the iscsi protocol. Most commercial NAS units support iscsi as well as NFS of CIFS. The latter two protocols are more commonly used because most of the time, the NAS is desired to be a shared resource.
 
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kuroteckie

kuroteckie

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So making using the ISCSI protocol will only map the NAS to a single host?




Thank you for your reply, it has helped me understand it a little better
 
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kanewolf

kanewolf

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iSCSI will map a volume on the NAS to a single host. A NAS can have multiple volumes. You don't have to make all the disks in a NAS into a single volume. In home situations, most of the time, a single volume is created with shares created at the directory level. That way you don't have to predefine size limits. If you create a 100GB volume on a NAS, it may be difficult to resize it to 200GB if you need more space.
 
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