Toll-free 1-888-227-29262. SAN (Storage Area Network) vs. NAS (Network Attached Storage)
A host bus adapter (HBA) is a circuit board and/or integrated circuit adapter that provides input/output (I/O) processing and physical connectivity between a server and a storage device. Because the HBA relieves the host microprocessor of both data storage and retrieval tasks, it can improve the server's performance time. An HBA and its associated disk subsystems are sometimes referred to as a disk channel.
2. SAN (Storage Area Network) vs. NAS (Network Attached Storage)
A SAN is a local network of multiple devices that operats on disk blocks while a NAS is a single storage device that operats on data files. Please see below for other differences:
| SAN | NAS | |
| Protocol | Encapsulated SCSI | TCP/IP and NFS/CIFS/HTTP |
| Device Attachments | Only devices with SCSI Fibre channel can connect to a SAN. | Any machine that can connect to the LAN can use NFS, CIFS or HTTP to connect to a NAS and share files |
| Data Identification | By disk block number and transfers raw disk blocks | By file name and byte offsets, transfers file data and handles security, user authentication and file locking |
| Information Sharing | OS dependent | Allows greater information sharing esp between disparate OS such as Unix and NT |
| File System Management | By Servers | By NAS head unit |
| Backups and Mirrors | Requires block by block copy | Done on files, not blocks |
| Wires | Fibre Channel | Ethernet, FDDI, ATM |
