Using SANs and NAS

Chapter 6. Managing NAS

Once you have received your new filer, what do you need to know to make it into a production system? As the network architect or system administrator, you will, of course, need to have a clear understanding of the basics of daily management. This includes knowing what tasks are involved in NAS management, what you should expect to do on a regular basis, and how these tasks can be simplified.

This chapter covers:

• The different uses for NAS

• Installing NAS

• NAS configuration

• Data migration

• Maintenance: support, monitoring and tuning

The Different Uses for NAS

As mentioned in Chapter 5, NAS offers high performance, high reliability, high availability, and multiprotocol access. Although just about every environment can benefit from these features, there are a few applications and market segments in which NAS is especially beneficial.

Data Consolidation

Sharing the home directories of thousands of users using workgroup NT/Unix “storage” servers can result in excessive management work, both in setup as well as hardware and software maintenance. The same is true with project data and department storage areas that are distributed and managed by distributed IT groups. Consolidating all your distributed data into a smaller number of systems that share them directly to users is a much simpler alternative. This results in the following features:

Ease of setup

Setting up a filer is easy. Most filers are designed to plug in to the network and share data, unlike general-purpose ...