Network-Attached Storage (NAS) provides flexible, intelligent, and manageable storage of information in an easy to deploy and administer appliance. NAS solutions are ideal for small and medium-sized enterprises and departmental or branch networks.
What is Network Attached Storage?
NAS devices are built around a highly-tuned and optimized appliance with an array of hard disks, attached directly into an existing local or wide area network for “plug and play” connectivity. Users access the shared storage space using standard file based protocols like NFS and CIFS.
NAS systems offer a “plug and play” storage solution because the operating system is pre-installed and no additional drivers are required to access the appliance. Many NAS appliances offer a web-based interface to configure user access rights and other options, making the deployment very straightforward.
Network-attached storage (NAS) is hard disk storage that is set up with its own network address rather than being attached to the department computer that is serving applications to a network’s workstation users.
NAS Benefits
- Easy to deploy– by plug and plug attachment to the existing network.
- Easy to manage– managing and allocating disk space is faster on a centrally-administered, easy-to-use web-based interface.
- Future scalability – NAS appliances can be expanded easily as storage requirements grow, and can be integrated in a larger, more sophisticated storage solution when the requirement arises.