NAS (Network Attached Storage) (Linktionary term)

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NAS (Network Attached Storage)

Note: Many topics at this site are reduced versions of the text in "The Encyclopedia of Networking and Telecommunications." Search results will not be as extensive as a search of the book's CD-ROM.

Click here if you are looking for NAS (Network Access Server)

NAS is a category of storage devices that attaches directly to a network, allowing clients to access the storage as if it were directly attached to their system. The technique bypasses traditional server attached storage. Storage becomes accessible to users directly across the network and much of the overhead imposed by server and operating system intervention is removed to improve performance.

This topic continues in "The Encyclopedia of Networking and Telecommunications" with a discussion of the following:

NAS description and NAS as "filers"
Network appliances
Use in data centers and at the department level
Comparison to SANs
CIFS (Common Internet File System) and NFS (Network File System)
NAS importance in the bandwidth explosion and peer-to-peer trend
Network Appliance's WAFL (Write Anywhere File Layout)
Comparison to IP storage solutions such as iSCSI and VI Architecture/DAFS (Direct Access File System) solutions
Block-level storage and access protocols

See "IP Storage" "DAFS (Direct Access File System)" and "VI Architecture" for more details.