Choose a NAS Server

Choose the Best NAS Server
With the demand for increased capacity of network storage on the rise, it becomes more and more crucial that the right decision be made. IT Managers faced with exponential storage growth must take into account key factors such as reliability, network infrastructures, performance and scalability. To determine which NAS server solution is best IT Managers must take into account multiple features and choose the best network attached storage server with the most optimal cost/GB ratio.

Judge for yourself if the AberNAS by Aberdeen is the solution of choice to provide the power and features to support today’s most dynamic and demanding network infrastructures.

Server-to-Server Fail-over
The AberNAS by Aberdeen provides the fastest network throughput in its class with high-speed dual gigabit network interfaces providing load-balancing and fail-over to ensure that all clients are serviced quickly and continuously.  The AberNAS offers server to server data back up where the primary and secondary NAS are connected via dual Gigabit Ethernet controllers with a private IP address. As data contained in the primary NAS are updated or deleted, the same updates are processed to the data contained in the secondary NAS in real-time. The primary AberNAS replicates itself to the secondary AberNAS server thus duplicating the same settings of the primary unit. Since this transaction is done through a dedicated Gigabit Ethernet, client access speed and response time to and from the primary NAS will not be affected.

In server-to-server fail-over the secondary AberNAS observes the primary server via network and disk I/O related services to determine whether server fail-over is necessary. Should the primary NAS fail to provide any required services, the secondary NAS takes over. Due to its replicated server settings and data, clients migration from the primary NAS to the secondary NAS is seamless and unnoticeable. Upon replacement or repair of the primary NAS, it can be re-deployed as a secondary or primary NAS.

RAID-1 OS Fail-over & Hard Disk Drive Mirroring
RAID (redundant array of independent disks; originally redundant array of inexpensive disks) is a way of storing the same data in different places (thus, redundantly) on multiple hard disks. By placing data on multiple disks, I/O operations can overlap in a balanced way, improving performance. Since multiple disks increases the mean time between failure (MTBF), storing data redundantly also increases fault-tolerance. A RAID appears to the operating system to be a single logical hard disk.
 

RAID-1. This type is also known as disk mirroring and consists of at least two drives that duplicate the storage of data. There is no striping. Read performance is improved since either disk can be read at the same time. Write performance is the same as for single disk storage. RAID-1 provides the best performance and the best fault-tolerance in a multi-user system.

RAID 1 is useful for building a fault-tolerant system or data volume, providing excellent availability without sacrificing performance. (NT does not support a RAID set as the boot volume--this capability requires a hardware controller). However, you lose 50 percent of assigned disk capacity. Read performance is somewhat higher than write performance because NT reads data off the drive whose head is closest to the desired sector (called locality of reference); all write operations are made to both disks simultaneously.