Solutions that put NAS in front of SAN

I have been looking at a hype-consolidation of +10TB into one system for both CIFS and NFS systems. There are two vendor solutions that spring into mind, EMC and NetApp. Can you tell me in what way they differ? It looks like the Celerra has a sort of multi NAS-head front to a Clariion or Symetrix when NetApp is a traditional dual controller design. And, how do you see the MS SAK impacting this space when combined with a SAN.

    Requires Free Membership to View

    Login

You are correct about EMC and NetApp. The EMC Celerra is a NAS front end (controller, gateway or head depending on which vendor terminology you choose) for block storage on Clariion or Symmetrix. The Clariion or Symmetrix may be directly attached or be part of a SAN. NetApp uses captive storage for its devices. Both are excellent solutions. The larger NetApp boxes can scale up in capacity to 16TB. The Celerra can support 52TB currently. Other solutions that put the NAS gateway in front of a SAN are offered by IBM (TotalStorage NAS 300G), HP (StorageWorks E7000), Auspex and a few others. All will scale to large capacities.

The MS SAK is an excellent operating system that is offered by major vendors in a restricted fashion where the additional software and drivers, that may not be as robust, cannot be installed. It probably is as reliable or more so than many of the embedded systems (the sheer test and usage amount makes a major difference). Many of the mainline vendors incorporate the SAK into their products and have done so successfully. Think of them as just another choice in the NAS offerings and don't focus on the underlying operating system whether embedded or standard. Look at the entire product attributes and the guarantees by the vendor in making a selection.

Randy Kerns
Evaluator Group, Inc.

Editor's note: Do you agree with this expert's response? If you have more to share, post it in one of our .bphAaR2qhqA^0@/searchstorage>discussion forums.


This was first published in November 2002

Join the conversationComment

Share
Comments

    Results

    Contribute to the conversation

    All fields are required. Comments will appear at the bottom of the article.
    Back to top