NAS is a single-function streamlined computer, so the architecture is not as complex as a personal computer, such as keyboards, mice, screens, sound cards, speakers, expansion tanks, all kinds of connectors are not needed; in appearance, just like home appliances, only the power supply and a simple control button. The NAS is similar in architecture to a PC, but because of its simplicity, it can remove many of the unnecessary connectors, control chips, and electronic circuits such as keyboards, mice, USBs, and VGAs.
SANs, large tape libraries, and disk enclosures are all great storage solutions, but they come with a hefty price tag and complexity. The market needs an easy-to-use storage solution for SMBs.
NAS is the product of this demand, which not only meets the needs of SMBs and government departments for storage devices, but also has enough room for expansion to meet their future development needs. The maturity of related technologies is an important factor in the rapid development of NAS products, especially the rapid development of IDE hard disk technology and the introduction of IDE RAID technology, which can be said to be a milestone in the development of NAS products. They not only make NAS products more mature, but also keep their costs down.
, NAS products from various vendors are almost all in the form of storage servers, and all of them have solidified the operating system and memory into their products. Vendors are pushing a new generation of NAS products featuring high capacity, low price, easy installation and setup operations, and good expansion performance.
NAS focuses on users such as ISPs/ASPs, CAD/CAM, small and medium-sized businesses, video production, government, healthcare, education, and so on.
NAS is actually a storage device with a Thin Server, which acts like a dedicated file server. This dedicated storage server is different from the traditional general-purpose servers, it removes the original general-purpose server does not apply to most of the computing functions, but only to provide file system functions for storage services, greatly reducing the cost of storage devices. In order to facilitate the storage to the network to send data between the most efficient way, specifically optimized system hardware and software architecture, multi-threaded, multi-tasking network operating system kernel is particularly suitable for dealing with I / O requests from the network, not only the response rate is fast, but also the data transfer rate is also very high. Compared with the traditional server-centered storage system, the data is no longer forwarded through the server memory (which can cause additional delays and blocking), directly between the client and the storage device (the so-called third-party transmission), the server only plays a role in controlling the management, and thus has a faster response time and higher data bandwidth. In addition, the requirements of the server to reduce the server can greatly reduce the cost of the server, which is conducive to high-performance storage systems in a wider range of popularity and application.