What is NAS?
It is a server that
is dedicated to nothing more than file sharing. NAS does not provide
any of the activities that a server in a server-centric system
typically provides, such as e-mail, authentication or file management.
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