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NAS gateway versus SAN-attached server

EXPERT RESPONSE FROM: Randy Kerns

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QUESTION POSED ON: 13 September 2004
We have a fixed budget and we are about to purchase a fairly large disk array. I would like to have a way to export some of this storage to my non-SAN connected hosts. The obvious (and possibly easiest) answer would be to purchase the NAS gateway option, but would it be more prudent to spend my money on the storage library and simply connect a server to the SAN that could export CIFS and NFS share?

EXPERT RESPONSE
The gateway option is a NAS controller that uses your SAN storage. The big advantage of NAS over using a standard server as a file server lies in the "appliance-like" operation of NAS. There is very little administrative work to do and you don't load other software on it, which might reduce stability. So it's simpler to use and more stable. Seems like it would be a good choice if you were only going to do file serving.

Read Greg Schulz' answer to this question.

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