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FEATURE For less than $50,000, network-attached devices hold hundreds of gigabytes of data and can turn your management nightmares into dreams come true.
Novell NetWare servers. Microsoft Windows clients. Linux boxes. Today's heterogeneous environments-- in everything from workgroups to the enterprise-promise colossal file-serving headaches. In the past, the approach was always the same: Pick your file-server platform, and install the appropriate file protocol packages and applications. Then be prepared to support the platform: Apply the patch releases to the NOS, update revisions of the protocols, maintain applications such as Web servers and quota software, and configure and maintain an ACL (access control list) for authentication.
With the ability to support file serving in a heterogeneous environment, a NAS (networkattached storage) server is the first step to ending some of that anguish. Offering superior scalability, simple setup and administration, cross-platform support, security integration, and an extremely low TCO (total cost of ownership), NAS servers are beginning to prove just how valuable they are.
If your organization is feeling the stress of growing storage requirements, planning storage capacity or looking for a way to simplify content delivery in a heterogeneous or a homogeneous network, the evaluation of NAS servers is a must.
NAS servers' sheer versatility sets them apart from conventional file servers. You'll have to get past one big obstacle, however: the preliminary comparison between a NAS server and an offthe-shelf Windows NT or a NetWare file server. Many IT managers may base their decisions on this initial price/performance factor, in which case midrange NAS servers are generally at a disadvantage.
We tested NAS servers from Excel/Meridian Data, JES Hardware Solutions, Land-5 Corp., Network Appliance, Network Storage Solutions and Procom Technology. If we had based our decisions solely on the initial price/performance, our evaluation would have ended early. We ran performance tests against a Dell Computer Corp. PowerEdge 4400 server with a Windows 2000 server, which at around $12,000 costs a third as much as-but outperformed most of-the NAS servers we tested.
In anything other than a small, homogeneous workgroup environment, however, it wouldn't take long for the TCO of that Dell server to fly past that of the NAS server. In fact, a recent study done by the Gartner Group found that at least...