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Dedicated network storage servers are often classified into two types based on whether data is accessed across the network by filename (offsets in a file) or by location on disk (raw disk block numbers). The former is often called network attached storage (NAS), whereas the latter is usually referred to as storage area network (SAN), although hybrid approaches have been proposed. Examples of NAS include SMB/CIFS, AFS, and NFS servers. Examples of SAN include GPFS (IBM's General Parallel File System) and various iSCSI implementations. File servers, in effect, are NAS servers running on a more general-purpose server operating system. NAS can be considered a specialized device that provides network file services. |
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