The best way to connect a NAS to a SAN

The best way to connect a NAS to a SAN

What is the best way to connect a NAS with a SAN?

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If you want to connect a NAS device to a SAN, the best way is to use a NAS gateway. A gateway is the NAS controller function (sometimes called a NAS head) without disk storage.

The gateway uses the block storage devices in a SAN instead. Usually a gateway will connect to the SAN with Fibre Channel connections that go to a switch (they could also be directly connected to a storage system) to the storage. The storage system will have a certain number and size of LUNs allocated to the NAS gateway and from the NAS standpoint, it looks just like captive storage.

Randy Kerns

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This was first published in April 2004