File Servers for the Small Business...?

Ever heard of NAS or SAN?

NAS stands for "Network Attached Storage," and SAN stands for "Storage Area Network." The latter is a high-speed fiber-channel network storage solution that, honestly, is a little too much sophistication for this System Admin and his budget.

Although, the NAS, now that seems to be what I've been thinking about the past couple of weeks. Allow me to explain...

As the data on my [weekly newspaper] network seems to grow, despite constant archiving and purging of aging and impertinent info, I've been having problems with my 80 GB file server getting filled up.

Adding more storage directly to my existing server, along with following a stringent backup and recovery scheme, proved to be too costly for the time being. That alone, coupled with the fact that I only have one (count 'em...one) file server on our network, means that I have one single point of failure if it ever decides to bite the dust.

Enter NAS. A NAS server is basically a hard drive that has file-serving and backup software embedded right into it – a stand-alone server if you will.

Long story short, I've decided to add one of these nifty little turn-key storage solutions to my network in order to share the file-serving load at my place of business. Coupled with my existing server, I would have essentially two (count 'em...two) servers in case one would fail. The point here, is that this "server" would be quite a bit less expensive than a full-blown file server, thus allowing me the low point of entry.

It should arrive tomorrow, and I will follow up with my findings shortly thereafter.

Regards!