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Best NAS(Network-Attached Storage) Solution

How does NAS work?

By shahid anwarPublished 4 years ago 3 min read

Best NAS Solution is a file-level storage architecture that makes stored data more available to networked devices. NAS is 1 of the 3 main storage architectures along with storehouse area networks (SAN) and direct-attached storage (DAS) NAS gives networks a single pass point for storage with built-in security, management, and fault-tolerant abilities.

NAS can be set up as a container-ready storehouse option effectively a setup where storage is exposed to a container or a group of containers. Containers are highly adjustable and bring amazing scale to how apps and storehouses are delivered.

How Does NAS Work ?

Hardware

Preconfigured storage software is installed on reliable hardware. Known as a NAS box, NAS unit, NAS server, or Best NAS Solution head, this hardware is essentially just a server containing storage disks or drives, processors, and random-access memory (RAM)

Software

The main distinction between NAS and general-purpose server storage lies in the software. NAS software is deployed on a weightless operating system (OS) that's usually embedded in the hardware. General-purpose servers have full OSs that send and receive thousands of requests every second a bit of which may be related to storage while a NAS box sends and accepts only 2 types of requests: data storehouse and file sharing

Protocols

A NAS box is formatted with data transfer protocols, which are traditional ways of sending data between devices. These protocols can be accessed by customers through a switch, which is a central server that links to everything and routes requests Data transfer protocols essentially let you access other computer’s files as if they were your own

Networks can run numerous data transfer protocols, but 2 are essential to most networks: internet protocol (IP) and transmission control protocol (TCP). TCP connects data into packets before they’re sent through an IP. Assume about TCP packets as compressed zip files and IPs as email addresses. If your grandparents aren’t on social media and don’t have access to your private cloud, you have to send them vacation photos via email. Rather than sending those photos 1-by-1, you can bundle them into zip files before sending them over. In a similar fashion, TCP merges files into packets before they’re sent across networks through IPs.

The files shared across the protocols can be formatted as:

• Network File Systems (NFS): This protocol is regularly used on Linux and UNIX methods. As a vendor-agnostic protocol, NFS functions on any hardware, OS, or network architecture.

• Server Message Blocks (SMB): Most methods that use SMB run Microsoft Windows, where it’s known as the "Microsoft Windows Network." SMB developed from the common internet file sharing (CIFS) protocol, which is why you might see it guided by the CIFS/SMB protocol.

• Apple Filing Protocol (AFP): A proprietary protocol for Apple appliances running macOS.

NAS benefits

• Scale-out ability: Adding more storage ability to NAS is as easy as adding more hard disks. You don’t have to boost or replace existing servers, and new storage can be made available without shutting down the network.

• Execution: Because NAS is committed to serving files, it removes the responsibility of file serving from other networked devices. And since NAS is tuned to exact use cases (like big data or multimedia storage), clients can expect better performance.

• Comfortable setup: NAS architectures are usually provided with simplified handwriting, or even as appliances preinstalled with a streamlined operating system—greatly decreasing the time it takes to set it up and control the system.

• The Accessibility: Every networked device has access to NAS.

• Defect tolerance: NAS can be formatted to support replicated disks, a duplicative array of independent disks, or erasure coding to provide data integrity.

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