NAS Storage Formats
As a developer, we occasionally need to perform storage administrator tasks. I came across the idea of setting up network-attached storage (NAS) for my organization. As a result, I’d like to discuss the various types of storage provisioning used in NAS.
In virtualization storage, both thick and thin provisioning are used. Normally, these terms “thick” and “thin” are not used explicitly in hyper-v or virtualbox, but they are used internally.
If the VHD files are
- Thickly provisioned, Once the space is created, it will be occupied. For instance, if we create a VHD file of 10 GB from “cluster volumes,” it will consume the entire 10 GB of space in the “cluster volume.”
- Thinly provisioned, Once created, the space will remain vacant. For instance, if we create a VHD file with a size of 10 GB from “cluster volumes,” the VHD file will not consume any space from the “cluster volume.” The VHD files will gradually grow in size based on usage, up to a maximum of 10 GB.
NAS:
The NAS has the below storage structure
- The HDDs will be combined using RAID configurations in the NAS. A NAS can support multiple RAID configurations.
- In NAS, the RAID is now configured as a “storage pool.” The “storage pool” can contain multiple RAIDs.
- Now, the “storage pool” is used to create “volumes” in the NAS for file storage. The “storage pool” may contain multiple volumes.
- The volume in a NAS can take on one of three distinct formats
Thick: Once the “storage pool” is created, all of the allocated space will be used. Once a thick volume is created, the “storage pool” will have less storage space.
Thin: Once the “storage pool” is created, the allocated space will be vacant. Once a thin volume is created, the “storage pool” storage space will remain unchanged. Depending on the files stored in it, the thin volume gradually consumes storage space.
Static: This is same as thick volume, but don’t have snapshot capability.
Below is the diagrammatic structure of the NAS
