SAN vs. NAS file sharing
Actually, that's where the industry is heading. A GFS (Global File System) is currently under development by Microsoft for the Windows platform (via Longhorn). There are already multiple solutions on the market from other OS vendors (Sun's SAM-FS, IBM's storage tank) and a few for Linux. You can buy these solutions today but they are proprietary. When all the OS vendors finally get together and agree on a standard for storage-based global file systems, it will become more prevalent and much cheaper.
This is a Q&A from SAN School Lesson 1.
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