In computer terminology NAS means Network Attached Storage, and is the name for a computer system that provides data storage services to other computers on a network.
A NAS is a device set up on a network whose purpose is to store files. Other computers on the network — client machines — connect to the NAS over that network and use its resources to store and retrieve their data.
Why NAS?
Imagine you a part of a sales team, and work in an office that sells “widgets”. Over the course of your day, you and the other members of your team work with the following materials:
- Promotional photographs and videos of the widgets.
- Spreadsheets that help track your widget sales.
- Manuals for installation of the widgets.
It doesn’t make sense to keep all of these materials on your own personal workstation. If you kept these materials in a shared folder available to the rest of your team, they would be locked out if you took a week’s vacation and decided to shut off your computer. And if you each kept your own copies of these materials, odds are in favor of someone’s files becoming out-dated sooner or later.
Sounds like you could benefit from networked storage
This is where NAS comes into play. By installing a Network Attached Storage unit, your sales team would have a central repository for all of its important digital materials. Everyone always has access to the files, and keeping everything in a central location means each salesman always has the latest information.
Besides ease of access, there are other benefits to Network Attached Storage. Since all of your critical files are kept in a central location…
- A NAS unit can have a great deal of storage capacity.
- Upgrading storage capacity with a NAS is easier than expanding the capacity of each person’s individual workstation.
- All of your important information can be easily backed up.
Photo by tanais.
