IP SANs To Replace NAS

A number of businesses are selecting IP SAN solutions over traditional NAS products for fulfilling storage consolidation projects. This document reviews the advantages and disadvantage of NAS vs. SAN, how NAS vendors address their disadvantages, and introduces an IP SAN solution, which combines any disk storage system with SANRAD's iSCSI V-Switches. This complete IP SAN solution will deliver a better solution than NAS.

iSCSI technology offers a unique inflection point in the storage market, where SAN technology becomes economically viable to mid range customers. Today, iSCSI broadens the definition of a SAN. In the past, building a SAN meant deploying high performance fibre channel while NAS was used for reaching storage over an IP LAN. With the introduction of IP SANs, the once captive NAS customer can now select an IP SAN for reaching and using data over the LAN. Users can now deploy a simple and highly managed IP SAN to displace NAS. By combining any standard disk storage with SANRAD V-Switch's, users can not only reach their storage over the LAN but also take advantage SAN benefits, which include block level performance, scalability and high availability. For many businesses, the need for NAS will be eliminated when offered the benefits of an IP SAN.