Network Attached Storage (NAS) is for the masses now

Another instance of a huge price drop changing the nature of a market. I just bought a quarter of a terabyte of backup storage for the server that this weblog and my other web stuff runs on. How much do you think a quarter of a terabyte (250 gigabytes) in a network attached, standalone backup server cost me? Remember, not too long ago people were paying $50,000 for a terabyte…

Well, i just paid $350 ($300 with the rebate) for a Buffalo Linkstation.

Those of you who've messed around with NAS and SAN know that those things are often a pain in the neck to install too, right? Well, this one took longer to get out of the box than it did to get it up and configured on the network.

Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be NAS vendors. The world has changed. Oh, did I mention that it's a print server too? And that you can hang an additional quarter of a terabyte on there for another few hunnert bux?

Friends of mine at ETA Systems used to say “a supercomputer is defined as the fastest computer of the moment” and the same can be said of NAS and SAN. So I imagine a few of you will point out that this isn't a very big storage system these days. But it's big enough for a whole lot of folks that the EMC's of the world used to go after.

Pretty cool gizmo.