SHARING THOUSANDS OF FILES

Companies use data to improve their bottom line. Data is growing exponentially, and many companies are dealing with “big data” and need to handle data generated by multiple devices, such as smart phones, smart tablets, laptops, wearable technology, and other data sources from the Internet of Things (IoT). A lot of this data is shared locally and remotely and it would be difficult to find an organization that is not using file sharing file sharing in some shape or form. Not all file sharing services are created equal and utilizing the correct type of file sharing is crucial to success.

Organizations often begin sharing files using large numbers of direct attached storage (DAS) file servers. The problem with this strategy is that each DAS must be separately acquired, provisioned, and maintained. To reduce the associated storage costs, IT organizations often move to using fewer file servers built from storage area networks (SAN) or network attached storage (NAS). But as data grows, multiple solutions are deployed, each requiring management and maintenance.

Over time, IT is often forced to over-provision, and over-purchase, capacity or performance or use an all-lash array to meet an application’s needs. This drives up the cost of data storage solutions. This paper demonstrates how TrueNAS lets you grow capacity or performance independently.

This white paper is intended for CIOs, systems integrators, and systems and storage administrators. It provides an overview of file sharing with DAS, SAN, and NAS, an introduction to file sharing concepts, and how TrueNAS can be used as a NAS to provide unrivaled data integrity protection with its OpenZFS enterprise file system.