[NTLUG:Discuss] Wireless Home Network

[Chris Cox]

Steve Baker wrote:
> Kevin Hulse wrote:
> 
>> It sounds like you should be using some serious SAN
>> hardware for this sort of thing rather than a NAS.
>> What gives?
> 
> 
> I'm not familiar with those terms (SAN, NAS)??
> 

SAN = Storage Area Network
NAS = Network Attached Storage

SAN is usually implemented using fibre today (though iSCSI
implementations exist, iSCSI is SAN over IP).  It's a way to
allow multiple hosts to see multiple storage devices (as if they
were locally attached) through a fibre network.  A disk on a SAN
would appear to be a SCSI drive device if the client is allowed
to see the device on the SAN.

NAS is storage that is exposed to the network via protocols like
SMB, NFS, etc.  It's more indirect than SAN.  It is also considerably
cheaper to implement.  It's fairly easy to turn a Linux box into
a NAS unit.

SAN networks are usually completely independent of your normal
network.  It's not that unusual to see NAS devices on your normal
network.  Fibre channel SAN doesn't use IP... which makes it even
more likely to be implemented separately from your normal network.
iSCSI allows you to build SANs across your existing network, but
it's not recommended for high performance applications.  Still,
iSCSI does allow you to attach to a device across IP.. which means
even across the Internet, etc.

Most SAN storage devices support features like
backup, snapshotting, volume management and RAID.
It's VERY expensive, and has a "coolness" factor about it.
Definitely for the high end, high availability crowd.
Performance is near local attached speeds but with
much greater flexibility.