Part of what makes making decisions on web and application hosting a tricky proposition for businesses is the sheer number of options to be considered. This is not only a factor for complex considerations like load balancing and content management solutions; it can make even straightforward items like data storage needlessly complicated. Understanding the purpose and roles of various data storage options can not only help you make better decisions, but it can guide your IT strategy and lead to better solutions for end users and customers. So what are the differences between local storage, NAS/SAN services, and data backups?
When we talk about local storage, we’re referring to disk drives that are physically attached to a computer or server. At minimum, this will contain the operating system and other software needed for the server to perform its desired functions. For companies just beginning to build a web presence, their local storage drives might also contain their web site files, databases, images, and other information, but as the website and applications grow this will cause scalability issues. When this occurs, the solution is to offload data storage from the server. The two technologies that are most common in the industry are NAS (Network Attached Storage) and SAN (Storage Area Networks), approaches that seem similar but server very different purposes.
NAS allows an administrator to attach a disk drive (or disk array) to a server through network communication protocols like Ethernet and TCP/IP and file system protocols like NFS. To the host system, the new storage space appears as an additional lettered drive. This solution is very popular for smaller home and office networks, offering a ‘plug and play’ solution for data storage and backups. Beyond a certain point, NAS will also suffer from scalability issues, and in high traffic situations performance becomes a concern.
SAN solutions use high speed Fibre Channel SCSI interfaces to attach RAID disk arrays to servers. The host sees a series of virtual disk drives, but the key difference is that these drives are viewed as locally attached devices, and system addressing is done at the disk block level, versus at the file level for NAS devices. This creates huge performance gains in environments that handle millions of transactions daily. It also allows for much faster and more thorough disaster recovery efforts, mitigating hardware dependencies through RAID and virtualization technologies.
Neither NAS nor SAN should be confused with an effective data backup solution, which may use one or the other or a different technology altogether. Your local storage and network storage are key components in your back up procedure, in the same sense that a weight bench or treadmill are important parts of a fitness routine, but they are not solutions in and of themselves.
Whether you are in the planning stages of your business web and application hosting services or are operating an established deployment, success will mean making smart decisions on how and where to use storage technologies to your best advantage. By understanding the roles of local storage, NAS/SAN, and how they integrate with your broader data backup and protection solutions, you can both secure critical business information and improve the overall user experience for customers and employees that interact with your website and hosted applications.
Tags: backup, managed backup solution, NAS, network attached storage, Online Backup, Online Storage, SAN, Storage Area Networks
