Although it’s possible to enjoy content online and to put your data into the cloud, sometimes users prefer to store things locally or at least have a local copy of their data. After all, DRM can be a hassle and content often comes and goes with online services. Small and home offices (SOHO) can also benefit from having their own storage, either exclusively or in a hybrid configuration with the cloud. This includes data for application services used by employees, remote or otherwise.

Users wanting this sort of flexibility can invest in network-attached (NAS) or direct-attached storage (DAS). The former can come as a pre-designed system that takes drives, or someone could use their own hardware in a similar configuration. The latter is simpler as the storage is attached directly to a machine. Having storage over a network is often more convenient, but it is possible to share storage in a DAS as well. An example OS option for storage would be TrueNAS while an example structure would be containers via Docker and/or Kubernetes.

NAS & DAS

Although it’s common for such storage to be composed of mechanical hard drives (HDDs), for example in the interests of high capacity, SSDs are usable as well. They can be used for caching or tiering purposes with the HDDs, ideally to improve performance and data availability. Arrays can also be created exclusively with SSDs depending on the user’s or business's needs. Drives can further be networked in various ways, such as with SMB, to offer flexibility in any environment.

We offer fast and compatible NVMe SSDs useful for caching, NAS, and DAS. Further, we offer accessories explicitly intended to be used for DAS, for example in a “just a bunch of disks” (JBOD) fashion. Software RAID is also possible with proper setup. This includes with our dual-NVMe enclosures and docks which can also offer additional functionality. We want our users able to use storage whenever and wherever they need it - in their home office, or on the go.

For more information, check PureStorage's blog.

See our USB hard drive docking station here.