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Access "Consolidating NAS pays off"

Alan Radding Published: 17 Oct 2012
Hot tips for buying storage technology

This article is part of the Vol. 3 No. 1 March 2004 issue of Hot tips for buying storage technology

The U.S. Army Reserve's 108th Division faced a massive consolidation challenge, moving the workload of 23 Windows servers at 23 locations to eight data centers. It might have built an elaborate storage area network (SAN) to hold its 2.9 TB of files. Instead, it opted for a set of network-attached storage (NAS) appliances running Microsoft Corp.'s latest storage operating system, Windows Storage Server 2003. "NAS seemed like the easiest way to go and it was also low cost," says William Bailey, network manager for Ciber Inc., Greenwood Village, CO, the consulting firm that consolidated the systems for the 108th Division. A select group of storage managers like Bailey are bucking the trend toward "everything on the SAN" and are finding a place for NAS in the enterprise storage infrastructure. While NAS may ultimately be more limited than a SAN, these storage managers are leveraging its well-known ease of use in combination with increased capacity and new features to drive significant consolidation projects. And with more options to converge block and file ... Access >>>

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