What is Network Attached Storage (NAS) and why is NAS Important for Small Businesses?

What is Network Attached Storage (NAS) and why is NAS Important for Small Businesses?

It’s true that Data is a critical asset for every companies

From home offices and small to mid-sized teams to big businesses and enterprise workloads, Archive, store, and share mission-critical content across teams is very important.

Without access to the data, companies may not provide their clients with the expected level of service. Poor customer service, Bad Customer relation, loss of sales, team collaboration problems are all examples of what can happen when data is not available.

Each of these issues are very critical and contribute to lack of outcome and potential loss of income. No Customers will wait for a data outage to be corrected. Additionally, when it comes to data storage, small businesses find themselves faced with other storage-related needs such as Lower cost options, Ease of operation, Ease of data backup

NAS devices are becoming very popular with enterprise and small businesses in many industries as an effective, scalable, low-cost storage solution. They can be used to support email systems, accounting databases, payroll, video recording and editing, data logging, business analytics etc.

What is NAS?

A network-attached storage (NAS) device is a data storage device that connects to and is accessed through a network, instead of connecting directly to a computer. NAS devices contain a processor and operating system so it can run applications and provide the intelligence needed for files to be easily shared by authorized people.  The beauty of a NAS device is that it can be easily accessed by multiple people, multiple computers, mobile devices, or even remotely. A NAS device is a storage device connected to a network that allows storage and retrieval of data from a central location for authorised network users and varied clients. NAS devices are flexible and scale out, meaning that as you need additional storage, you can add to what you have. NAS is like having a private cloud in the office. It’s faster, less expensive and provides all the benefits of a public cloud on site, giving you complete control.

NAS systems are perfect for SMBs.

·        Lower cost

·        Simple to operate (No need for an IT professional to operate)

·        Easy data backup and recovery, with granular security features

·        Centralization of data storage in a safe, reliable way for authorized network users and clients

·        Supports a large variety of applications

·        Permits data access across the network, including cloud-based applications and data

FlexNAS Pro from PrimeArray

Unparalleled Performance & Reliability:

·        Support Dual-active controllers

·        Supports 802.3ad port trunking, Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP) with VLAN

·        High data bandwidth of system architecture by powerful INTEL 64-bit RAID processor

·        Built for multi-user environments by providing high workload rates for heavy data transfer networks

Unsurpassed Data Availability

·        RAID 6 capability provides the highest level of data protection

·        Supports Snapshot, Volume cloning, Replication, Thin Provision

·        Supports Microsoft Windows Volume Shadow Copy Services (VSS)

Exceptional Manageability Menu-driven front panel display

·        Management GUI via serial console, SSH telnet, Web and secure web (HTTPS)

·        Event notification via Email and SNMP trap

·        Menu-driven front panel display

Features

·        3U 16Bay rack-mount redundant RAID subsystem with SBB compliant controller.

·        Supports iSCSI jumbo frame

·        Supports Microsoft Multipath I/O (MPIO), MC/S

·        Supports RAID levels 0, 1, 0+1, 3, 5, 6, 10, 30, 50, 60 and JBOD

·        Local N-way mirror: Extension to RAID 1 level, N copies of the disk

·        Global and dedicated hot spare disks

·        Write-through or write-back cache policy for different application usage

·        Supports greater than 2TB per volume set (64-bit LBA support)

·        Supports manual or scheduling volume snapshot (up to 64 snapshot)

·        Snapshot rollback mechanism

·        On-line volume migration with no system down-time

·        Online volume expansion

·        Instant RAID volume availability and background initialization

·        Automatic synchronization of firmware version in the dual-active mode

·        Supports S.M.A.R.T, NCQ and OOB Staggered Spin-up capable drives

·        High efficiency power supply which compliant with 80plus.

NAS is growing in popularity. And with good reason. NAS servers allow access to company data 24×7, and using the right hard drive will provide the best experience possible. FlexNas Pro equipped NAS servers help provide tremendous competitive advantages, increase levels of customer service, and extend the collaborative reach across any project, at any company. In many cases, the only limit to the usefulness of having a NAS solution in your business may be not having one at all!