Compared with the spectating propaganda in the past few years, the sound of NAS is getting smaller and smaller.
Users have a big question for the development of NAS.
NAS is an important branch of network storage
Before the 1990s, the user's storage environment uses the most DAS (direct storage). DAS despite convenient use, the large amount of data stored cannot be shared by other servers, and the expansion problem is difficult to resolve, and the system maintenance is often required for downtime. As a result, network storage set off a vigorous revolution, which completely changed the dominance of DAS in the storage area.
It is well known that there are two ways of NAS and SANs in network storage. Through recent years, SAN has firmly established a good high-end storage image-excellent performance, high reliability, and fully meets the storage needs of online services. And we find that NAS is in a relatively distressed situation-San-San-San-San-San-San, and the NAS equipment has been rare, and many manufacturers have introduced the integrated SAN solution to provide users with More enrich features, and NAS devices are more in the "single-handed".
From the product itself, on the one hand, numerous NAS products have a large bottleneck in performance, on the other hand, the price of high-end NAS products is difficult to be accepted by users. In the user's mind, NAS has gradually formed the impression of low-end products. Therefore, the author heard some users to evaluate NAS, "Performance cannot be more than the SAN, the function is much less than the server, the price is much higher than the server, NAS is a bit" high, low, no, "."
The prospect is still optimistic
However, it is a good market reaction with the majority of users "feel bad".
In the recent period, several NAS manufacturers have developed rapidly. NETWORK APPLIANCE NAS businesses increased by 15.8% in the second quarter of 2004; HP increased by 64.2% year-on-year than year-on-year, and HP became the fastest growing year-on-year growth.
IDC expects NAS to still maintain a good growth situation in the next few years. The surface of all kinds of signs, NAS will still develop rapidly with the help of network storage.
Go out three misunderstandings
NAS is different from the position of SAN, and the service object is different, that is, it is not "SAN, low-end storage NAS", which is not more. Recently, through communication with some users, the author believes that the position of the NAS product is not familiar with the user, and the user has some misunderstandings.
NAS, server mix
First, from essentially, NAS is a storage device, not a server. NAS is not a simple version of the file server, which has a functional feature of some servers. The function of the server is to perform business processing. The role of the storage device is to perform data storage. In a complete application environment, the two devices should be organically combined, the server focuses on the front end, the focus of the storage device at the rear end.
The difficulty of NAS is how to quickly write to disk systems after a lot of data, and the writing of ordinary servers is completed after writing memory. On the one hand, the NAS operating system is a simple version of the server operating system. On the other hand, in some respects, NAS features are far stronger than servers, such as in network file sharing. Therefore, the NAS operating system is to meet the system stores, which is very refined and focused on network file sharing. Some users said that Microsoft launched the operating system for NAS, with the purpose of direct development storage, but did not develop. Some vendors cannot explain the difference between NAS and servers to the user, so that the NAS is called a storage server, and the NAS is integrated with the server, which means that it has encountered a small difficult difficulty in the development of NAS products. Server and NAS comparison list
Main Source Server Business Processing Performance Server Business Processing Performance This server generates data NAS storage data high-speed data access, data security other client data
Smaller
Some vendors claim highly functional power when promoting NAS products, but carefully analyze that these powerful functions and storage relationships are not large, such as processing performance, multiple application functions, etc., more products are installed by system management servers and backup servers. In the NAS product.
A few more, many server vendors launched NAS products from product characteristics, more like servers, function, but their focus did not provide sufficient advantage. Many Huawei's fierce features will greatly affect the core storage business of NAS. The operation is specially attacked, and only the "Bank" stored "this line" is fully good enough to win the confidence of the user.
It should be noted that the vendor adds various functions for NAS and does not indicate that it is necessary to pay attention to the product, which only requires simple integration. Some analysts pointed out that the profit of single NAS products gradually decreased with fierce competition between various manufacturers, which has made NAS products through the Gao Li era, especially the low-end market, which enters the low-end market, has added more competitors. . These are unfavorable factors for manufacturers to increase research and development efforts.
Performance bottleneck
Performance is an aspect of the user's dissatisfaction with NAS, but the performance of performance decline is actually a big relationship with the user's use environment. On the one hand, the various functions mentioned above occupies a part of the NAS, in addition, the storage network is not separated from the user's internal network, which must affect performance.
However, performance is by no means NAS natural weaknesses. In fact, some high-end NAS product performance is excellent, and many aspects can be equivalent to the products of the SAN architecture. Many third party evaluation agencies can prove this, and users can easily compare.
The author suggested that today, the price of Gigabit Ethernet declines, using a separate Gigabit environment helps to improve NAS performance, while reducing NAS unnecessary features is also a good suggestion.
