Understanding SAN vs NAS for SMB Markets

Understanding SAN vs NAS for SMB Markets.

 

One of the greatest downside of the SAN is that, while they do offer the multi-host access to the device, but they don’t offer the multi-host access to the file, whereas most application want that multi-access file facilities (application used in media industries), if you want a system connected to the SAN and to be able to read/write to the same file then you required for the clustered file system. Such file system are available such as quantum StorNext file system but are quite expensive, whereas the NAS system or filers have multi-host file access technology from long time..

NAS are consider and are easier to understand and manage than SAN, because NAS device there is only NAS GUI to understand and from that GUI you can almost do lots of thing, and manage the NAS more nicely and CIFS and NFS concept are also not difficult to understand, whereas the SAN with FIBER make you to learn about the fiber technology and san switch concept , zone concept , loop concept, HBA understanding is also required and even the SAN device management understanding is also required, so if you see there are HBA vendor manual to read, switch vendor manual to read, and SAN storage vendor manual to read, whereas in NAS there is only one NAS vendor manual to read and understand..

In NAS as the whole NAS come from single vendor so any problem happens you can contact to that vendor for the troubleshooting, as we know the storage is the only box who in IT environment to take the initial blame for all the problem, everybody blames storage if the data is not available, performance issue and so and so.., but if we Cleary see there are lots of factor and component and hardware between storage and server, so when it comes to SAN environment there is lots of vendor involvement in case of performance detection, hardware failure or management issue, because HBA from different vendor, san switch from different vendor can make you call all those vendor in case of troubleshooting, so management of NAS compared to SAN is quite handy and easy.

NAS filers can be difficult to backup to tape. Although the snapshot and off-site replication software sold by some NAS vendors offers some wonderful recovery possibilities that are rather difficult to achieve with a SAN , filers must still be backed up to tape at some point, and that can be a challenge. One of the reasons is that performing a full backup to tape will typically task an I/O system much more than any other application .This means that backing up a really large filer to tape will create quite a load on the system. Although many filers have significantly improved their backup and recovery speeds, SANs are still faster when it comes to raw throughput to tape.

The throughput possible with a SAN makes large-scale backup and recovery much easier. In fact , large NAS environments take advantage of SAN technology in order to share a tape library and perform LAN-less backup.

 

SAN is costlier than NAS and that’s quite understandable but now a days, san solutions are getting cheaper or quite affordable, like NETAPP FAS series, EMC VNX series and HITACHI HUS series are the vendor which offer the unified storage solutions which can be used as SAN and NAS and we see the costing also is a quite affordable, but then solution selling vary from country to country, like I am a presales engineer in INDIA, and when I go to the customer for discussion of the storage solutions , in spite of how good the technology is and how nicely it’s going to improve its performance, at the end its all go waste ,because of budget issue, people or IT Manager of Indian companies, I would not talk about the enterprise but for the SMB market , it becomes quite difficult to sell the storage solutions, because they don’t have budget or they don’t look for the long time saving, but they all look for what can be bought with this approved budget, they need best in smaller price.., again the SMB market is dived into three different segments small SMB , MID  SMB and enterprise SMB, and there all lots of opportunity to do business in those companies, like they have business potential they have budget also ,and they can easily go for the good IT solutions, but as the companies grows their mentality does not grows , until and unless they see some disaster happening due to low budget IT solutions they are using in their environment, I have seen some companies they have good money with them, but if visit their IT infrastructure, they are not using centrally storage, not using virtualization, they are not suing any backup solutions, they are just keep on buying the servers and keep on taking the manually backup of their servers and desktop\laptop if they need to protect them.., they don’t understand that how one time investment can save their time, money and can protect their data nicely, and they all end up spending or losing more money which they thought they saved for not buying a good solutions.

But if you see from other side of table, customer will say that vendor presales guy or sales guy does not spend much time on counseling of those IT Manager and telling them how they can save lots of money in buying a right solution for their environment, but if you ask to the IT sales guy, his performance are measured by his targets, so it does not make sense for him to waste his or his presales guy time on those customer whose budget is low range, and it becomes quite difficult because of one more reasons there are solutions which can be bought in low range budget, but then it can resolve your problem for short term not for long term, and people in INDIA or IT manager of all those SMB looks for short term solutions not for the long terms, it doesn’t mean they cannot be changed, they can be but by proper counseling and proper knowledge sharing, or spending some good time with them.

Enterprise they don’t compromise in quality, and SMB they can be fooled easily….

Thank you..