Storage Solutions

Companies are under tremendous pressure to store, protect, distribute and derive value from an ever increasing amount of stored data. The storage market broadly falls into two categories:


            DAS - Direct Attached Storage
            SANs / NAS - Networked Storage


DAS works well in environments where there are a limited number of servers - however the storage can't easily be shared and scalability is limited.

Within a SAN the servers can share a storage resource but not the data. Component costs are typically high and support can be complicated.

In a NAS environment the servers are connected to the storage by a standard Ethernet network. A rapidly emerging new technology ' iSCSI ' enables these systems to be deployed more easily and at reduced costs.

The iSCSI architecture can be used to build IP SANs using a standard Gigabit Ethernet infrastructure. The benefits of such an approach include:


            Ethernet is a stable and familiar technology.
            Installation and support costs are reduced - lower TCO.
            High degree of interoperability (Gigabit Ethernet).
            No practical distance limitations.


The Adaptec Snap Server is a recognised leader in this field.

Following the implementation of a NAS architecture, the next obvious step is to deploy disk to disk back up for Disaster Recovery.

Snap Servers can be located at different locations and the EDR software used to replicate data automatically. This is a very simple process to set up and because EDR only sends 'changes' rather than 'complete files' the impact on the network performance is minimal.

The Snap Server product range includes larger products for the data centre and smaller solutions for the branch office or home worker.