SAN vs. NAS, in practice
A SAN presents block storage over Fibre Channel or iSCSI and is the right call when you need low-latency, high-IOPS storage for databases, virtualization datastores, or anything that behaves badly on shared file protocols.
A NAS presents file storage over NFS or SMB and fits general file shares, backup targets, and workloads where simplicity of access matters more than shaving milliseconds off latency. Plenty of environments run both, for different reasons, and we size them separately rather than forcing one architecture to do both jobs.
All-flash vs. hybrid
All-flash arrays have come down in cost enough that they're now the default recommendation for primary, latency-sensitive workloads — the price premium over hybrid is smaller than most people expect once you account for the performance headroom.
Hybrid arrays (flash tier plus spinning disk) still make sense for large capacity-first workloads — backup targets, archives, and media libraries — where raw capacity per dollar matters more than IOPS.
What we size for
- Capacity planning that accounts for real growth, not just current usage
- Replication and snapshot requirements for your RPO/RTO targets
- Backup target sizing separate from primary storage
- Controller redundancy and failover testing before delivery
Typical configuration range
Manufacturers we source
NetApp, Dell, HPE, Synology, QNAP, Infortrend, and Quantum, among others.