Product data

Storage Concepts and Technologies
Alternatively, the ports may be configured as a single logical link (aggregation) to a single
switch (Figure 5).
NSS6xxx/4xxx
CIFS or NFS Sessions
“Network Drives”
Link Aggregation Group
2 x 10/100/1000 Ethernet
NSS6xxx/4xxx
CIFS or NFS Sessions
“Network Drives”
CIFS or NFS Sessions
“Network Drives”
Link Aggregation Group
2 x 10/100/1000 Ethernet
Figure 5: Link Aggregation
Each NAS device should provide Ethernet connectivity with enough ports to support the
expected storage traffic. For example, the Linksys NSS supports two redundant Gigabit
Ethernet (10/100/1000Mb Ethernet) links for connectivity. The NSS also supports advanced
LAN functions with VLAN mapping and tagging, QoS control and link aggregation.
Storage Centralization/Aggregation
The business can defer large investments in storage with storage centralization or
aggregation. Rather than the total volume of storage being fragmented across multiple
devices, network drives are consolidated into a dedicated storage infrastructure that allows
much greater levels of utilization to be achieved. Storage can be bought and deployed on a
"just-in-time-storage" basis and provisioned on an as needed basis. Tasks like backup can be
done once for the consolidated storage system, rather than for multiple independent systems.
Storage aggregation is supported across the family of Linksys NSS products.
Storage Virtualization
Virtualization is about scaling storage capacity while simplifying user access via a single
virtual system. Virtualization can be utilized when there are two (2) or more NSS devices
located at the premise. Virtualization allows volumes that are physically located on “Slave”
NSS units to be logically assigned to a local “Master” NSS system (NSS6000). The virtualized
storage appears as a single logical storage unit on the Master, allowing volumes and shares
to span the entire storage array.
Up to 4 disk sets may be imported per master NSS device, where they are combined to create
a JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Disks) set. This JBOD appears to the users as one large unit of disk
space on the network, upon which volumes and user shares are then created. This allows the
users to access all storage for that virtualized system via a single network drive location.
Design consideration should be given to the RAID levels that are used in virtual sets. It may
be beneficial to enable a JBOD that is entirely constructed of RAID 5 sets or RAID 10 sets.
This approach ensures that all the capacity within the JBOD performs to the same
redundancy and fault-tolerance capabilities. In the example below (Figure 6), two (2) striped
RAID sets are exported from the outside NSSs (a NSS6000 and a NSS4000) and imported on
to an NSS6000, such that the master system presents two array sets to the user: 1) a JBOD set
(containing both imported Striped arrays); and 2) a RAID mirror set.
Administrators assign shares to each set based upon user requirements for either Striped or
Mirrored protection.
White Paper: Network Storage LINKSYS © 2007
8 EDCS-593805 v1.0
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