The Low End Pure SAN Device Collection
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People are often very confused about what is a NAS and what is a SAN. The two are determined by technology, not by size, reliability, cost or other non-technology factor. SAN is block storage over a network, NAS is a networked file system, rather different animals. Most storage devices in the SMB market are unifed storage - meaning that they contain equally SAN and NAS functionality and are one or the other depending on how they are used. This adds to the market confusion as they are often labelled NAS (because who would use them as a SAN?) To help people understand what entry level (or lower) SANs look like, I wanted to collect a list of some of the devices on the market that are pure SAN, not unified storage, to make it clearer what the term SAN would include.
Note: SAN vs. DAS is by use. Any direct attach storage put onto a network of any sort becomes a SAN. So technically every USB external hard drive is just as capable of being a SAN as any other SAN since USB networking is possible. IEEE1394 Firewire SANs were actually popular for a brief moment in history. So basically any block storage is SAN capable, but we want those designed for networking here.
Netgear SC-101
Drobo B800i
Drobo B1200i
Buffalo TeraStation III iSCSI
