For huge enterprise businesses, storage and data are essential parts of their operations and growth. However, not all data is the same. Some might be much more sensitive than others.
NAS has many use cases in a myriad of industries. This article showcases real-world use cases for NAS (Network Attached Storage). And how they can improve a company’s competitiveness and efficiency.
NAS storage in automotive services
Enterprise NAS storage is becoming a trend in automotive services. This is because vehicle data is increasing at an exponential rate. This trend will be driven by the need to comply with emerging regulations. For connected vehicles and initiatives. To deliver new services and capabilities, such as autonomous driving.
The most prominent use case is autonomous vehicles. Here, the challenge is to aggregate vast quantities of data generated by the car’s sensors (including cameras, radar, and lidar). A typical scenario can be using deep learning algorithms to analyze that data in real-time to decide when to apply the brakes.
This sector ingests vast amounts of data every day. Streaming this amount of data to the cloud is a no-go because of latency. Instead, the providers use massively scale out enterprise NAS to store the images and cloud caching to maintain adequate performance.
NAS storage in university libraries
Some of the uses, such as supporting the digital preservation efforts of the library and storing digital assets for distribution to students and faculty, can be handled by a traditional NAS storage. But others, such as serving as a repository for research data and supporting live and near-live streaming to and from campus and off-campus areas, require a different set of capabilities.
A university digital library ingests vast volumes of raw data from a myriad of studies worldwide. Specialized NAS storage systems are custom-built to store and process vast quantities of raw machine data.
Some of the best NAS systems that scale out depending on the needs of the enterprise are manufactured my StoneFly that comes with many other valuable features for data management and security like Anti-virus and anti-ransomware, Immutable delta-based snapshots, Write-Once Read-Many (WORM) volumes, Automated storage tiering, Deduplication, AES 256-bit encryption, and Sync/async multi-appliance/multi-site replication.
Enterprise NAS is used in high-end applications.
Enterprise NAS supports high-end applications such as microscopy, rendering, 3-D animation, and image processing. These are applications with stringent requirements, where performance, availability, and reliability are essential.
To meet these stringent requirements, enterprise NAS vendors have developed powerful features in their products to improve performance and protect data from various failures.
Bottom Line
Given the high cost of enterprise NAS, it is worth asking what enterprise NAS is used for. Enterprise NAS applications range from those in the financial services industry such as stock exchange systems, trading platforms, and securities record-keeping to those related to digital media such as film editing, digital content creation, and video editing.
Enterprise NAS is also used for high-end applications and is an excellent choice for a backend storage solution for educational institutions, research facilities, as well as medical and legal sector.
