As long as the applications support
Nas [network attached storage], there is no real reason to
avoid Nas.
Exchange is one example of an application that does not support
Nas, and most high-end database applications use
San [storage area network]. Remember that Nas works at a higher
layer and offers more intelligence but introduces a bit more
latency that limits performance. San platforms also have the
benefit of incumbency -- it's already deployed in the organisation
and supported with experience and expertise.
I believe that Nas is great for the world of persistent data,
and San is great for the blazing fast transactional world, so I
like a combination of the two. But it's all based around best
practices. I know companies that have an all Nas environment,
though maybe they throw in a little iSCSI to support email. Those
users employ Nas with high-end mission-critical databases and it's
working fine. So there is no absolute method or approach -- it's
all about what you want to do, but I like the idea of merging these
technologies together so that
multiple protocols can be served up for a
single storage system.
Check out the entire
Nas FAQ guide.