NAS servers are beginning to receive the attention they deserve. SANs are making big headlines everywhere. A SAN is a specialized high-speed network that interconnects different kinds of data storage devices with associated data servers. Still in its infancy, SAN technology is undergoing heavy development. SANs only recently made the migration from an arbitrated loop to switched-fabric hardware.
SANs offer several key benefits, starting with their role in disaster recovery.
A SAN can span 15 kilometers, making off-premises storage feasible. Many times the data storage devices are RAID boxes. Additionally, each server within the SAN can realize a huge performance benefit from all of the RAID boxes working in conjunction. If that's not good enough, the RAID sets are not physically bound to a storage device. A SAN also creates a heterogeneous data store using a transparent metadata scheme.