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NAS – Network Attached Storage

Vangie Beal
Last Updated May 24, 2021 7:50 am

A network-attached storage (NAS) device is a server that is dedicated to nothing more than file sharing. Network-attached storage does not provide any of the activities that a server in a server-centric system typically provides, such as email, authentication or file management.

NAS is a Storage-Centric Design

NAS allows more hard disk storage space to be added to a network that already utilizes servers without shutting them down for maintenance and upgrades. With a NAS device, storage is not an integral part of the server. Instead, in this storage-centric design, the server still handles all of the processing of data but a NAS device delivers the data to the user.

A NAS device does not need to be located within the server but can exist anywhere in a LAN and can be made up of multiple networked NAS devices.