How to Choose the Best Enterprise NAS Storage for Your Business

 “The cost effective nature of NAS storage makes it a preferred choice among enterprises.” Said Technavio’s lead analyst Rakesh Kumar

Storage drives and storage technology is evolving day by day, similarly the capability of enterprise Network Attached Storage (NAS) for storing data is increasing proportionally. Businesses are always searching for optimized storage solutions. Choosing the right kind of enterprise NAS storage is important for managing enterprise-grade workloads.

SMEs, SMBs, and large organizations can leverage enterprise NAS storage technology for a variety of use-cases and applications. When it comes to choosing the NAS most suited for your business, it may be a bit difficult to pick the right kind of NAS storage without proper guidance.

Consider these questions when choosing an enterprise NAS storage for your business:

Ø  How much storage capacity is needed?

It may sound simple but this question warrants a great deal of preparation and forecasting. Do it wrong and your business ends up with fat provisioned storage resources that consume space, resources, and add no immediate value. Do it right and you get exactly what your business needs; immediately adding value and using resources affectively.

 

 In terms of forecasting storage capacity, file-level storage or NAS storage is ideal because of its scalability. The ability to scale file-level infrastructure enables businesses to setup storage as per their immediate requirements and they can scale when their storage requirements grow. 

A thing to note here is that the ability to scale depends on the vendor and the NAS storage technology. For instance, StoneFly offers a NAS storage solution that can scale into petabytes and they can set it up as a redundant appliance too; giving users the ability to dually scale (performance + storage capacity) their storage infrastructure. 

How “flexible” is the enterprise NAS storage

Enterprise NAS storage can be called “flexible” if it can adapt and accommodate in accordance to businesses’ requirements. Here’s a brief list of what a good enterprise NAS storage solution should offer as a standard:

• Compatibility with mainstream servers and software.
• Built-in cloud connect and support for enterprise clouds like Azure cloud storage, AWS cloud, and others.
• Configurable as an All-Flash, Hybrid (SSD/Flash + SAS/Hard drives), and pure SAS/hard drive NAS.
• Should support High Availability (HA) configuration and multi-path connections.
• Should offer data services such as erasure coding, snapshots, replication, and encryption.
• Should have a modular, redundant, and hot-swappable architecture. 

You might be thinking, that’s a big list. Are there really any enterprise NAS storage solutions out there that provide all of these desired features? Well yes, StoneFly SSO™ NAS delivers these and more.

Conclusion

In the end, every business has their own set of requirements. That’s why what works for most may not work for your business. It is very important to first analyze and understand what your business needs when it comes to data storage. And then begin the search for the ideal enterprise NAS storage.

However, regardless of the industry and the use-case, there are some attributes that should be a part of an enterprise-level NAS storage solution. A NAS appliance has to be flexible enough so that it’s future-proof and has the ability to scale as the business data grows. It has to be reliable so that in the event of hardware failure, the business doesn’t have to endure data loss.

These two are the most important attributes of an ideal enterprise NAS storage solution and a must-have for all businesses. 

Everything You Need to Know About NAS Storage

What is NAS Storage?

NAS stands for Network Attached storage, which is a data storage technology that works across a network. Enterprise NAS Storage offers file-level data storage which is sharable quite easily across the network. This is one of the reasons it is so widely used in enterprises.

NAS storage enables users to access the data from anywhere they want. This element makes it a very suitable solution for enterprises that have branch offices or off-site locations that need access to data archiving storage.

Why Choose NAS Storage?

There are some highly useful benefits which make users decide in favor of NAS storage instead of remote cloud server. For instance, NAS appliances offer more speed and agility and there is also no dependency on any third party like it is the case with a remote cloud provider. So, it is easy to deploy and it fast.

NAS Storage Is Faster

NAS Storage is faster because it does not depend on many factors but only the speed of a network and the hardware of NAS. It is unlike a remote server that depends on numerous factors ranging from the internet connection to the firmware being used.

NAS Storage can be connected directly to your computer using a USB cable and it can create a network of its own where speed is not compromised.

NAS Storage Enables Hosting of Files

Another advantage is that users can host files. There are no security issues related to your data being hosted on a remote server so this makes it safe to do so. It adds on the security and minimizes the risks of data leakage.

NAS Storage Is Efficient & Easy to Use

NAS Storage works brilliantly for enterprises where file-sharing is made a lot easier and efficient. When the employees are working in one office, and need files to be shared over a network with high speed and efficient use of storage space, NAS storage does this in an easier, faster and a productive way for the business. 

NAS Storage Offers Data Protection & Security

There is a misconception in the market that NAS storage is more vulnerable to data breaches and data theft as it works over a network, well this is not true.

There are vendors (like StoneFly) which offer NAS Storage solutions along with state-of-the-art TLS and SLL encryption which protects enterprise data while it is transmitted over a network, and I/O encryption when data is residing in the storage or when is it at rest.

So, data protection and security are not a concern with NAS appliances and offers enterprises peace of mind about their data security.

Conclusion

NAS appliance has its numerous advantages and features that makes it a very suitable option for enterprises, especially of small and medium-size. It can offer storage capacity for large volumes of data with a lot of ease.

The main advantage of using NAS storage is that it offers high speed and data availability and accessibility from anywhere. It is a file-level shareable data storage solution which works great for enterprises that need high-speed file sharing at run time.