Product Description
Data is the lifeblood of modern business, and modern data centers have extremely demanding requirements for size, speed, and reliability. Storage Area Networks (SANs) and Network Attached Storage (NAS) allow organizations to manage and back up huge file systems quickly, thereby keeping their lifeblood flowing. W. Curtis Preston's insightful book takes you through the ins and outs of building and managing large data centers using SANs and NAS. This book explains the similarities and differences of SANs and NAS to help you determine which, or both, of these complementing technologies are appropriate for your network. Preston exams each technology with a vendor neutral approach, starting with the building blocks of a SAN and how they can be assembled for effective storage solutions. He covers day-to-day management and backup and recovery for both SANs and NAS in detail. Whether you're a seasoned storage administrator or a network administrator charged with taking on this role, you'll find all the information you need to make informed architecture and data management decisions.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.0 based on 10 reviews)

Great for folks new to this area of IT by Justin Simoni (California)

4 Stars
June 18, 2007
This book gives great description of SANS and NAS. In addition, a clear comparison of SANS and NAS technologies is given which is helpful in deciding what is right for your own organization. This book is not exhaustive on the subjects, but do point the reader in the right direction. I thought the time spent on the topic of backups was especially nice.

This is a entry-level book. Too general for serious work by Keqin Gu (Fremont, CA USA)

3 Stars
May 15, 2007
This book focuses on general concept and structure. No vendor specified information is included. It is a good entry-level book. But serious SAN/NAS users will need more detailed information.

Great book on the theory of NAS and SAN by Robert Lines (Pittsburgh, PA United States)

4 Stars
February 13, 2007
I found this book to be very helpful in sorting out the differences between the two technologies that have started to blur in many ways. I read this book from cover to cover and the layout was great. The book starts with a good overview of the past technologies that most IT people know and then begins to compair them to NAS and SAN and shows how those old technologies are evolving to fit into the new design. As someone who has not had exposure to Fiber Channel hands on the book did a great job of explaining the technology and what part it plays. It gives a real nuts and bolts explination of the peices and what they all do. The book then goes into describing SAN. It gives some typical uses along with the advantages and even the disavantages of SAN. In the next chapter it describes one of the major advantages to SAN in terms of Backup and Recovery. It doesn't go into detail and tell you what the commands are to do these things but more what you need to get the job done and what role each part plays. The next three chapters are on NAS. The first one gives an overview of NAS and goes into uses along with the advantages and disadvantages of it. The second chapter gives information on how to manage NAS and is a bit too specific but does give a good foundation for the things that you need to look for to get the most out of NAS. The thirst chapter is on Backup and Recovery in a NAS environment. It gives a good overview of the technologies that exist but again gets into a little too much detail and is hung up on specific technologies. Overall I would suggest this book to any IT people who have a solid background in server and network technology but are looking for what storage solutions exist and how they can be leveraged.

Good Overview by Panda

3 Stars
January 26, 2005
This book has a good 10K foot overview and basic groundings for beginners. Also is good at comparing and contrasting SAN vs NAS. But, very light on detail especially in the area of NAS. If you don't know anything about SAN/NAS give it a read. If you've much experience it'll be mostly review.

Good introduction

3 Stars
January 06, 2004
Hi,This books serves as good introduction to SAN and NAS. It covers backup and recovery for SANs very nicely and at appropriate level. As far as NAS is concerned, it skims the topic.Its a good introduction to various technologies. The details will have to found elsewhere.Overall review - worth reading it.

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