San [storage area network] environments actually have tons of
file data stored on their Tier 1 storage and secondary storage,
even though it's all
iSCSI or
Fibre Channel based.
And, all of those file servers in the organisation are
essentially
Nas [network attached storage] systems -- single file servers
talking in a Nas protocol. You can consolidate those systems using
virtual server technology, Nas systems or virtual Nas or FAN [file
area nework] systems, but many San folks aren't even thinking about
that today. Nas and Fan products are being sold to Nas users, but
rarely are they being marketed to file server environments.
The point is, if the data is unstructured and persistent, why
are you keeping it on the most expensive spinning disks? We find
that 60% to 80% of a company's data becomes dormant -- no one is
accessing it 90 days after it's created. So, why is it still being
backed up every night? Move it all off to another tier with
file-level knowledge, and you can grow huge archives. Sprinkle in a
bit of indexing and search to make it even more useful. We see
these file stores growing into the petabyte range, and it's
happening very rapidly. So, Nas can bring valuable capabilities to
even dedicated San organisations.
Check out the entire
Nas FAQ guide.