Data Deposit Box Cloud Backup Expert Tips: What do RAID, NAS, SAN Storage Mean?

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By Ben Puzzuoli, Director Sales & Marketing at DataDepositBox
November 09, 2015

Data Deposit Box Cloud Backup Expert Tips: What do RAID, NAS, SAN Storage Mean?

Do some online backup and data storage jargons bewilder you? You are not alone. You have plenty of company! One way to tackle the problem is to learn the jargon and improve our understanding of the terminology that is commonly used. It may begin with understanding the storage jargon RAID/SAN/NAS that jumps up at you, the moment you open any document about storage devices.

While RAID protected NAS/SAN storage technology has been around for some time now, it is being increasingly harnessed by online backup service providers offering secure offsite storage options to small and medium businesses. RAID is short for Redundant Array of Independent Disks. SAN is Storage Area Network and NAS is Network Associated Storage.

RAID technology combines two or more independent disk drives in an array for fault tolerance and performance. The technology guarantees high availability, redundancy and near-instantaneous recovery from disaster. RAID levels (Level 0 to Level 10) with options to add redundancy, performance enhancement, interleaving, duplexing, mirroring, replicating and caching when used with SAN or NAS takes storage to the next level of maturity.

Storage Area Network (SAN) is used with RAID Level 5 or 10 to enhance storage performance. SAN comes with many whiz-bang features that are not available in RAID–storage virtualization, improved availability, manageability, scalability, fault tolerance and performance.

Since SAN is an independent network of storage subsystems and is not owned by any server it makes virtualization wholly possible. Storage that combines SAN with RAID can be accessed from any location without reference to the physical location of the server. SAN creates a scalable environment. Servers can be added or abstracted from the network without impacting the storage or worrying about configurations or interruptions. The SCSI protocol in SAN technology encapsulates and advantages users. The high speed copper and optical fiber interconnects makes it possible to share data via hub or switch. It enhances workflow of information among storage devices and systems on the network.

Small and medium enterprises attempting to maximize performance and ensure data security prefer RAID with SAN over RAID with NAS. Why? NAS is not as flexible as SAN. NAS uses the TCP/IP or Ethernet CAT 5 cabling to connect to the network and is often attached to the local area network within the data center. NAS is subject to latency, bandwidth storms and competitive demands from other network users. NAS is not independent of the network and not as secure as SAN. NAS uses NFS technology for read/write operations. Implementation of file level security calls into question the robustness of the technology in withstanding unauthorized access.

So, if you must be familiar with best practices in applications and storage device management, you must get familiar with types of storage devices and the advantages online backup can confer on you. Familiarity with the jargon could be your first step in the direction of making your data secure, available, accessible and highly discoverable.

At Data Deposit Box, we believe in harnessing the best of the breed storage devices to advantage our users, the small and medium enterprises that deserve enterprise grade protection on par with large organizations. We strongly believe that SMBs must get on with their business on the same footing with reduced data storage risks that the larger enterprises take for granted.

About the Author: Ben Puzzuoli is Director of Sales & Marketing at DataDepositBox, a Toronto based cloud data backup service provider, which is listed at both the Toronto and Frankfurt Stock Exchanges. DataDepositBox technologies and solutions are currently used daily by over 200,000 customers, 1,000 resellers, 25 MSPs and private label partners for online backup and recovery, archiving, disaster readiness, secure file sharing and remote access. Visit DDB website here: www.DataDepositBox.com

Tags: Ben Puzzuoli, DataDepositBox, Expert Tips