Object Storage vs Scale-Up NAS: Which is Right? A Comprehensive Guide

Jun 11

9 min read

Scale up and scale out are two versions of NAS. Object storage is an alternative to NAS for handling unstructured data.

Scale-up NAS

When network-attached storage is used, the NAS head is the piece of hardware that controls everything. Through an internet link, it gives you access to storage on the back end. Scale-up design is the name for this set-up. Depending on how scalable the controllers are, adding drive shelves to a system with two controllers can increase its capacity.

Scale-out NAS

To add more storage space, the person in charge of scale-out systems puts in bigger heads and more hard drives. When a business scales out, it can easily change to meet its changing business needs. Scale-out systems for businesses can store billions of files without slowing down to look for metadata.

Object storage

Object storage may become more popular than scale-out NAS, according to some experts in the field. It's possible, though, that the two systems will continue to work together. Scale is something that both scale-out and object storage deal with, but they do so in different ways.

The Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX) gives NAS files a central place to be handled. It keeps data safe and makes sure that multiple programs can use the same scale-out device without worrying that one program will replace a file that other programs are using.

Object storage is a new way to store data that is easy to expand in web-scale settings. This method works well for unstructured data that is hard to compress, like big movie files.

It does not use POSIX or any other file system. All of the objects are shown in a flat address area instead. Metadata bits are added to each object to describe it and make it easy to find in a flat address area.

NAS vs. DAS

The term "direct-attached storage" (DAS) refers to a storage or server that is not tied to a network. The most basic form of DAS is the hard drive inside a computer. The person or computer must be able to get to the physical storage in order to view DAS files.

DAS works faster than NAS, especially for apps that need a lot of computing power. This is because they have dedicated disk access and don't have to deal with the latency of network data. DAS could be as simple as the drives that go in a computer.

With DAS, you have to handle the storage on each device separately, which makes things more difficult. DAS doesn't work well for shared storage by multiple people like NAS does.

NAS vs. SAN

What's the difference between NAS and SAN? A storage area network (SAN) groups storage resources on a separate, fast network. A SAN handles I/O requests for blocks of data that are all connected together, while network-attached storage handles I/O requests for single files.

SAN/NAS convergence

The worlds of file storage and block storage have been kept separate by technology until lately. Each has had its own area of management and set of pros and cons. It was thought by most storage managers that block storage is "first class" and file storage is "economy class." A lot of business-critical information being stored on SANs gave rise to this idea.

With the rise of unified storage, vendors tried to make SAN/NAS convergence better for large-scale file storing. This puts both block- and file-based material on the same storage array. The same set of switches can handle both SAN block I/O and NAS file I/O with convergence.

When SAN and NAS work together, they can do a lot more than just change how data is stored. Designers have known for a long time that SAN and NAS are not competing storage technologies, but rather technologies that work well together. Putting SAN and NAS together in one storage system can help users in many ways, such as:

eliminating islands -- and complexity -- of separate SAN or NAS storage;
improved storage scalability and a common management platform for both SAN and NAS;
improved file-level access and virtualization for SAN;
supporting optimizations for mixed file and block data; and
mitigating the costs of separate SAN/NAS storage and management.
The concept of hyper-convergence first appeared in 2014, pioneered by market leaders Nutanix and SimpliVity Corp., now part of Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE). Hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) bundles the computing, network, SDS and virtualization resources on a single appliance.

Each level of an HCI system's storage is pooled together and shown to a host as a NAS mount point. They do this even though block-based storage is what the shared resource is really made of. One bad thing about HCI is that it only offers the most basic file services. In this case, a data center may still need to set up a different network with storage for files connected to it.

Converged infrastructure (CI) puts together servers, networking, storage, and virtualization tools on hardware that has already been tested and integrated by the vendor. CI uses separate devices instead of HCI, which combines devices into one frame. This gives customers more choices about how to set up their files. Companies that want to make managing their storage easier might choose CI or HCI solutions instead of NAS or SAN.

These days's convergence and HCI products not only combine SAN and NAS storage, but they also combine computing (servers) and networking equipment into one set, which makes it easier to set up and expand a whole data center.

NAS and file storage vendors

Network-attached storage systems still use moving media most of the time, even though flash storage is becoming more popular. There are a lot of vendors, and most of them give more than one configuration to help customers find the best balance between speed and capacity.

NAS systems can be bought with disks already installed, or they can be bought without disks and customers can add HDDs from any seller they choose. Drive makers like Seagate Technology, Western Digital, and others work with NAS companies to make sure that media is ready to use.

Vendors of NAS appliances or scalable file storage include the following:

Accusys Storage Limited. With ExaSAN, which is based on Peripheral Component Interconnect Express, Accusys offers scalable shared flash. Both the Accusys Gamma and T-Share devices are Thunderbolt 3 devices that have RAID built in.

Arcserve Inc : The data and ransomware protection provider acquired StorageCraft's NAS technology for enterprise environments.

Asustor : A subsidiary of Taiwanese computer electronics giant Asus, Asustor offers NAS models for personal and business use.

Buffalo Americas Inc : Offerings include the TeraStation desktop and rackmount NAS appliances. Buffalo's LinkStation NAS devices are targeted at small businesses and individuals.

Buurst Inc : The vendor's SoftNAS Cloud NAS software-only product enables customers to scale data migration to Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and VMware vSphere.

Cloudian : HyperFile by Cloudian is a scale-out NAS system for scalable enterprise file services on premises.

Ctera Networks : The software company's Edge X Series offers a cloud storage gateway and NAS appliance.

Ciphertex Data Security : Ciphertex SecureNAS CX is a line of secure storage appliances.

DataDirect Networks. DDN specializes in storage systems for high-performance computing, including the ExaScaler arrays engineered for high parallelization.

DataOn Storage : The vendor certified its scale-out file server to enable tunable, shared clustered storage to Windows Server 2019.

Dell EMC : PowerScale -- replacing EMC Isilon -- is a scale-out NAS that provides the flexibility of a software-defined architecture with accelerated hardware.

Drobo : 5N NAS is the vendor's low-end complement to the Drobo B810i and B1200i iSCSI midrange arrays.

Excelero Inc : In 2017, Excelero jumped into the market with NVMesh Server SAN software. This software is in the middle of virtual file systems and block drives. Thanks to its patented Remote Direct Drive Access, it writes data straight to non-volatile memory express devices.

Fujitsu : Celvin NAS servers are suited for backup, cloud, file sharing and SAN integration cases.

Hitachi Vantara : The Hitachi NAS Platform combines Hitachi's Virtual Storage Platform arrays and Storage Virtualization Operating System and is geared to large VMware environments.

HPE. 3PAR StoreServ from HPE is a flash storage NAS system.

Huawei : Scalable File Service (SFS) is a NAS service on Huawei Cloud with scalable high-performance file storage.

IBM : Spectrum NAS combines IBM Spectrum SDS with storage hardware. Spectrum NAS runs on x86 servers. IBM Spectrum Scale handles file storage for high-performance computing. Spectrum Scale is SDS based on IBM's General Parallel File System.

Infinidat : The vendor's petabyte-scale InfiniBox unified NAS and SAN array predominantly with disk. It uses a B-tree architecture that caches data and metadata on SSDs, enabling reads directly on the nodes.

IXSystems Inc : IXSystems designs consumer-oriented TrueNAS for enterprises.

Microsoft Azure. Microsoft's FXT Edge Filer, with a file system designed for object storage, offers cloud-integrated hybrid storage that works with an organization's NAS and Azure Blob Storage.

NetApp Inc : With its Fabric-Attached Storage and All Flash FAS, NetApp helped pioneer the use of an extensible file system.

Netgear : ReadyNAS by Netgear is available in desktop and rackmount models as storage for hybrid and private clouds.

Nexenta Systems Inc : NexentaStor is an SDS that also supports FC and NAS. The software runs on bare metal, VMware hosts or inside VMs on hyper-converged hardware.

Nexsan : Unity, the company's durable arrays, can handle both SAN and NAS protocols. This means that hybrid media can handle a variety of tasks, especially in harsh environments.

Big Data. The Sun Storage 7000 Unified Storage Systems are business-level storage systems that are fast, scalable, and easy to use, and they come with built-in tools.

Panasas : The ActiveStor parallel hybrid scale-out system runs the Panasas PanFS file system.

Pure Storage. The vendor positions its all-flash FlashBlade as a highly scalable platform for big data analytics.

Quanta Cloud Technology : QCT offers MESOS CB220 NAS appliances.

QNAP Systems Inc : QNAP makes a wide range of network attached storage (NAS) products for small and medium-sized businesses, as well as midrange and high-end companies. For people who use their homes, it also has goods.

Quantum Corp. competed with Dell EMC Isilon and NetApp FAS by releasing the Xcellis scale-out NAS. Xcellis uses the flexible file system Quantum StorNext.

Qumulo Inc : Qumulo Core file storage was developed by several of the creators of the Dell EMC Isilon technology. The Core OS runs on Qumulo C-series and P-series branded arrays, as well as commodity servers.

Rackspace Technology : Enterprise services include dedicated NAS based on the NetApp OnTap OS for managed block- and file-level storage.

Seagate : The BlackArmor NAS 220 enterprise arrays scale from 1 TB to 6 TB, with smaller BlackArmor models topping out at 2 TB. Seagate Personal Cloud NAS targets the consumer market with capacity up to 5 TB.

Spectra Logic Corp : The storage company introduced BlackPearl NAS ranging from 48 TB to 420 TB of optional hybrid flash in a 4U rack.

Synology Inc : NAS devices for business and home use are available, such as DiskStation NAS and devices from the company's FS, XS, J, Plus, and Value Series.

Master Terra. The seller has a number of multidrive systems that can be used for business, such as the F5-422 and T6-423.

Thecus Technology Corp : Thecus markets a range of NAS appliances.

Verbatim Corp : A subsidiary of Mitsubishi Chemical Corp Verbatim offers PowerBay NAS, which supports four hot-swappable HDD cartridges that can be configured for various RAID levels.

WekaIO : The company's VM-deployed NAS software is put on flash-enabled x86 computers and can handle trillions of files with its parallel file system.

Western Digital Corp : My Cloud NAS comes in different models with HelioSeal helium HDDs that are named. Through Western Digital's G-Technology division, you can also get portable, rugged NAS.

Zadara Storage : Cloud NAS provides scalable file storage as a service with the software-defined Zadara Virtual Private Storage Array.

Cloud-based file storage

Some data centers use cloud-based file storage in addition to or instead of physical NAS systems. The Amazon Elastic File System is the storage in Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud that can be expanded as needed. In the same way, Microsoft's Azure Files service lets both local and cloud-based applications use managed file shares based on SMB and CIFS.

The on-site NAS is situated in the data center of a business and connects directly to the business's internal network. Customers can connect to a service provider's cloud NAS through a WAN or the internet. The NAS is housed in the data center of the service provider.

It would be great if cloud-based file storage made it as easy and convenient for users and businesses to store and access data from the cloud as it is from a local NAS device in the data center or on a PC. Cloud file storage can be used for many different things, such as web hosting, content management, data analytics, data backups and storing, streaming content, and making software. At the same time, the cloud provider must offer important storage features like high availability, good performance, high security, full control, and low cost. Here are some popular ways to store files in the cloud:

Barracuda Cloud Backup
Dropbox
Google Drive
IDrive
Microsoft OneDrive

NAS gateways used to be common and let files access externally attached storage. They could connect to a high-performance area network over FC or just a group of disks in servers that were connected. People still use NAS gates, but not as often as they used to. These days, people are more likely to use a cloud storage gateway, object storage, or scale-out NAS.

At the edge of a company's data center network, a cloud gateway moves apps between local files and the public cloud. Nasuni Corp. made the cloud-native UniFS file system software, which comes with Dell PowerEdge servers or can be bought as a virtual storage device.

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