Each time you require more storage space on a computer or server system, it would be complicated to add further hard disks, or attach a RAID to a server, particularly within a data centre environment. SAN (Storage Area Network) devices are designed to simplify this process by providing dedicated block level data storage access to other computers attached to the local area network. Each segment of storage space is presented as a device to the host operating system of a single computer or server which requires extra capacity and is treated exactly the same as any directly attached hard disk drive.
SAN systems provide only block-level access, without the knowledge of the file system and data stored within the segments. The SAN device splits the storage into segments which can be allocated to different systems, several of which can be assigned to a single server. This space is often used as a single file system spanned across the segments although each segment may contain a discrete file system or be used as a device in a RAID, depending upon the requirements demanded of that server.
A SAN server typically uses a RAID array to ensure built-in redundancy, often combining more than one RAID level to create RAID architectures such as RAID 50 and RAID 10. As with any hard disk or RAID system, failures can occur, such as hardware errors, logical corruption or operator errors, which can make the data inaccessible.
In the event of your NAS server failing, for which some data has not been backed up, contact DiskEng now. Our data recovery specialists can give you guidance and discuss the best possible data recovery solution for your problem.
