What is a NAS, and how does RAID work

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Denyse Buckner NAS is an acronym for Network-attached storage. It actually represents a storage system for hard drives and can include different things within it, like configuration of RAID. When used in along side LAN IP, NAS can be configured to send different applications to network users spread across different workstations. NAS typically has its own set of programs for configuring file locations to different network attached equipment. This storage system is often included as a part of a more complete solution like SAN. NAS is so different from other forms of storage systems that different kinds of programs and OS that run on NAS serves limited purposes like data access, data’s functionality, and supervision of different functionalities. A typical NAS unit doesn’t limit clients to a single FTP. NAS systems typically incorporate one or more hard drives that are set into superfluous, and logical of storage containers or RAIDs. With NAS at your disposal, your responsibility of sharing several files across servers on a network is fully eliminated. This could also mean deployment through commercial embedded units or through those systems that run NAS programs. Contrary to a NAS system, RAID represents a system that is developed by combining several lower end hard drives to form a single storage device of larger magnitude. The device is known to provide superior performance, reliability and storage capacity, at least as compared to other forms of storage solutions. There are six distinct levels that have been developed in RAID, as agreed upon by numerous manufacturers world wide. The levels range from 0 to 5. Other combinations too are included in these levels including level 10 and level 6. In Level 0, data that is spread across different disks is striped without parity or redundancy. Maximum data transfer takes place in this level. This level is also known to handle large files in a good way. However, Spare drives are not so useful at this level. Level 1 is known to duplicate data across several disks. It effectively means that data can retrieved from a drive even if it is absent in another drive. This level is ideally suited for smaller applications. In Level 2, data is interleaved across many disks. All this while, parity information will be created using a code. This code is useful in detecting the error and the region where it has occurred. In Levels 3 and 4 too, data is striped across multiple drives. While the former is implemented at BYTE level, the latter is done at BLOCK level. These two levels are responsible for combining the performance that is seen in RAID 0. These two levels are ideal for large transfer sizes. Striping of parity information and data at BLOCK levels spread across many drives is seen in Level 5. RAIDs work at different levels as per the levels mentioned above. They can be implemented in software or hardware. While the software versions of RAID make use of computer’s memory and CPU for its functions, the hardware versions make use of either internal or external RAID boards for its functioning.External hard drives

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