3 typical models for data storage solutions

The explosion of information technology in recent years makes us have new changes in our daily lives. There are more means of transportation, computers become common in work, social networks become an easy place to connect friends with each other. The Internet is becoming ubiquitous and accessible. That also poses a problem for businesses about the ability to store data when the information is easy to emit, difficult to classify and store. Here are 3 popular types of hosting to help businesses grow more sustainably:

Traditional storage solutions – DAS

DAS (Direct attached storage) is a storage mechanism with a device attached directly to the server. This is considered a traditional storage technology used by many businesses. With DAS mechanism, each server will have a separate storage system and storage management software. The advantages of the DAS solution are its ease of installation, low cost, and high performance. However, the disadvantage of DAS is its limited scalability.

In fact, DAS works very well with one server, but as data increases, the number of servers also increases, creating scattered and discontinuous data areas. At that time, the administrator will have to add or reset the capacity, and maintenance work will have to be done on each server. That will increase the overall storage cost for the business, and it will be even more difficult to back up or protect such a scattered and distributed data warehouse system.

NAS technology storage solution

NAS (Network Attached Storage) is a method of storing data using special storage devices attached directly to the LAN like a normal network device (similar to a computer, switch or router). NAS devices are also assigned fixed IP addresses and are accessed by the user through server control. In some cases, the NAS can be accessed directly without the need for server management. In a multi-operating system environment with many different servers, data storage, data backup and recovery, management or application of security policies are all done centrally.

Advantages of NAS

Scalability: when users need more storage, new NAS storage devices can be added and installed to the network.

NAS also enhances network failure resistance. In a DAS environment, when a data server is down, all of that data becomes unusable. In a NAS environment, the data is still fully accessible by the user. Advanced failover and redundancy measures are in place to ensure that the NAS is always ready to deliver data to users.

Disadvantages of NAS

With the use of the same network infrastructure with other applications, data storage can affect the performance of the entire system (slowing down the speed of the LAN), which is especially concerning when storage is needed. often large amounts of data.

In an environment with database systems, NAS is not a good solution because database management systems often store data as blocks, not as files, so using NAS will not give good performance. .

SAN . Solution

SAN (Storage Area Network) is a high-speed private network used for data transmission between servers participating in the storage system as well as between storage devices. SANs enable centralized management and provide the ability to share data and storage resources. Most SANs today are based on fiber optic channel technology, providing users with high scalability, performance, and availability.

The SAN system is divided into two levels: Physical and Logical

– Physical level: Describes the interconnection of network elements to create a uniform storage system that can be used simultaneously by many applications and users.

Logic Level: Includes applications, management tools, and services built on top of physical layer devices that provide SAN management.

Advantages of the SAN . system

Capable of backing up data with large capacity and regularly without affecting information traffic on the network.

SAN is especially suitable for applications that need speed and small latency, such as transaction processing applications in the banking and financial industries.

Data is always in high availability.

Data is stored in a unified, centralized and highly manageable manner. Ability to recover data if something goes wrong.

Supports many different storage protocols and standards such as iSCSI, FCIP, DWDM…

Has good scalability in terms of number of devices, system capacity as well as physical distance.

High level of security due to centralized management as well as the use of tools to support SAN management.

However, the disadvantage of SAN is the higher initial investment cost compared to DAS and NAS solutions.