What Is The Difference Between A NAS And A SAN?

There are two main differences between a NAS and a SAN. The first difference is between the speed of a NAS vs. a SAN, the second difference is about the type of access.

Typically SANs use fibre channel, fibre channel over Ethernet or iSCSI access. This access means that you can’t just copy files to the SAN over the network, without a server in between. It also means that SAN storage is much faster compared to a NAS which typically uses CIFS or SMB traffic.

Because of these differences, SANs and NAS technology tend to be used for different things. SAN storage tends to be used for high intensity loads (virtual machine storage, large network storage, etc.). NAS storage tends to be used to low intensity loads, file shares in smaller networks and archival.