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Ace Data has mastered the art of pooling disk resources and creating a single-shared entity shared between servers, no matter where they reside on your network. The data that resides in different locations can be accessed from a single source through a cost-effective, tailor-made solution that includes a backup.
At Ace Data the consolidation solutions are tailor-made keeping in mind the exact configuration and requirements. Appropriate consolidations solutions help improve disk utilisation, storage management expenses and easy backup and restores.
Our holistic approach ensures that all aspects of the infrastructure are addressed and the benefits of virtualisation are fully realised.
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Network Attached Storage, or NAS, is a data storage mechanism that uses special devices connected directly to the network media. These devices are assigned an IP address and can then be accessed by clients via a server that acts as a gateway to the data or in some cases allows the device to be accessed directly by the clients without an intermediary.
The beauty of the NAS structure is that it means that in an environment with many servers running different operating systems, storage of data can be centralised, as can the security, management, and backup of the data. Another big advantage of NAS is expandability; if you need more storage space then just add another NAS device and expand the available storage. NAS also provides an extra level of fault tolerance to the network. In a DAS environment, a server going down means the data that server holds is no longer available. With NAS, the data is still available on the network and can be easily accessed by clients. Fault tolerant measures such as RAID, can be used to make sure that the NAS device does not become a point of failure.
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SAN is a network of storage devices that are connected to each other and to a server, or cluster of servers, which act as an access point to SAN.
In some configurations SAN is also connected to the network. SAN's use special switches as a mechanism to connect the devices. These switches, which look a lot like a normal Ethernet networking switch, act as the connectivity point for SAN, making it possible for devices to communicate with each other on a separate network, hence bringing with it many advantages.
Advantages:
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The ability to back up every piece of data on your network without having to 'pollute' the standard network infrastructure with gigabytes of data is one of the biggest advantages of SAN. |
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A high-availability, high-performance and dedicated storage network that connects to servers and storage in a secure, flexible and scalable architecture. |
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Another big advantage is the ability to support intelligent storage management functions with minimal server involvement through a consistent centralised interface. |
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Virtualisation is pooling of physical storage from multiple-network storage devices, into what appears to be a single storage device that is managed from a central console. |
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Storage virtualisation helps the storage administrator perform the tasks of backup, archival, and recovery more easily, and in less time, by disguising the actual complexity of SAN. |
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Users can implement virtualisation with software applications or by using hardware and software hybrid appliances. The technology can be placed on different levels of a storage area network. |
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Unified storage (sometimes termed Network Unified Storage or NUS) is a storage system that makes it possible to run and manage files and applications from a single device. A unified storage system consolidates file-based and block-based access in a single storage platform and supports Fibre Channel SAN, IP-based SAN (iSCSI), and NAS (Network Attached Storage).
A unified storage system simultaneously enables storage of file data and handles the block-based I/O (input/output) of enterprise applications. In actual practice, unified storage is often implemented in a NAS platform that is modified to add block-mode support. |
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