Windows Storage Technologies

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Windows Storage Technologies

Sooner or later each company that operates with large data volumes becomes concerned with storage and security matters. When the opportunity to decide what kind of storage to choose for your production environment, it is important to take into account several important things and provide answers for a couple of questions:

What will be the required storage capacity?
Is it necessary to have a scalable storage?
Is data high availability of primary importance?
What is the storage budget?

When these questions are answered, it is possible to define the storage technology that suits best to your requirements: DAS, SAN or NAS.

DAS (Direct Attached Storage)

There are several storage options that can be used to configure a Windows server. Usually, there is one or more HDDs mounted on each server. Most often, OS and different applications are installed on these disk drives. Direct Attached Storage (DAS) can be used if IT environment requires more storage for user data or databases.

This type of storage is mostly used by small sized companies that are attracted by a low price for a considerable amount of storage space. To create DAS, users only need a separate cabinet that contains additional HDDs. Usually an internal RAID-controller is mounted into a server for connecting to the storage. Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) technology is utilized for disk array connections.

One of the important advantages of Direct Attached Storage is the low price of its implementation. In DAS, each storage array is managed separately because the storage is attached to a definite server. However, DAS has several considerable disadvantages. It is difficult to scale due to its limited capacity and it offers limited cabling choices (1 to 4 meter cables). Moreover, because of its architecture (the RAID controller is usually mounted inside the server) this kind of storage does not protect against data loss and does not eliminate single point of failure.

NAS (Network Attached Storage)

NAS is a hybrid storage technology that uses an attached server to serve a storage array. This type of storage can be used by numerous clients simultaneously through an Ethernet network. NAS transfers data at the file level, while SAN and DAS transfer data at the block level with the latter being more productive. Usually, NAS can be created in an existing network infrastructure which substantially lessens the initial investments for this kind of network. That is why it is popular among the small and middle sized companies. NAS uses various protocols for file processing, e.g., NFS for clients with UNIX OS and CIF for those who use Windows.

Typically, NAS solutions configure the storage arrays as iSCSI targets that can be used by multiple clients across the network. It is also possible to implement special iSCSI networks which help to increase network throughput.

SAN (Storage Area Network)

Storage Area Networks can satisfy requirements of both SMBs and large enterprises. SANs use external RAID controllers and disks and offer high performance storage for multiple servers.

The main advantage of Storage Area Network is that it provides storage arrays to numerous servers. Due to this ability, it is possible to extend storage anytime. SANs provide high speed data transfer and processing with the high availability of stored data due to redundancy of disk controllers and disk drives.

It is possible to create Storage Area Network based on Fibre Channel or iSCSI protocols. Discussion of benefits and drawbacks of both goes beyond this topic but you can learn more about the protocols here: iSCSI vs. Fibre Channel.

Below are the key advantages of SAN:

Mirroring helps to ensure business continuity and is very important for any disaster recovery plan.
Snapshots and CDP are used for replication and protection of mission-critical data and applications.
A possibility to manage really large storage capacities.
The scalability and ease of extending your storage in the hot-swap mode using the Thin Provisioning feature.

The StarWind Software Company offers its Storage Area Network solution – StarWind iSCSI SAN, which allows you to build your own storage at low startup costs by using an existing network and server infrastructure. StarWind iSCSI SAN is a powerful storage with enterprise class features, such as High Availability, Snapshots, Synchronous Mirroring, Asynchronous Replication, Data Deduplication, and Thin Provisioning. Small and medium sized companies worldwide trust StarWind and use it as their storage solution. This is because StarWind iSCSI SAN provides high performance, reliability, scalability and simple management of storage at an affordable price.

Learn more about StarWind functionality here: StarWind iSCSI SAN software features.

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