SAN / NAS Commentary
1
It is doable, but it is important to choose the right protocol for high-performance, non-NFS access, which is usually SAN, unless it is strictly for archival read-only purposes. Below is an excerpt from a previous similar support ticket:
NAS disk presents itself as mapped drives to Windows. We've never recommended mapped drives, as they rely on the network and file services on both ends to always run perfectly to avoid file corruption. Better, though more costly, is a SAN setup, which offers block i/o and appears to the o/s as a native file system. You can also easily get several local TB when buying a new system.
NAS would probably be fine for read-only historical libraries, so it could be used for space distribution, but I wouldn't be confident in it for active library storage.
Also, regarding read only archival libraries (not being added to with new documents), under the NFS protocol:
Libraries are just directories, so as long as the server can access them, all you need to do is create library paths to them via the browser interface.
Note we've seen security issues before on NFS mounted files, so you might want to check into making them available through some other protocol. Then again, it seems there must be a way to get that working, we've just never had the time to do so. It might be due to the server typically running as root, which is possible to change.
2
NAS is typically a blanket term for many network protocols, including SMB and NFS, neither of which is a viable storage system for active indexed files like are used by unform archiving. NAS stands for 'network attached storage', a very generic term. It is certainly possible that one would offer something more fault tolerant than those older network file system protocols, but we aren't familiar with all those protocols so can't comment on that specifically. Any NAS is by definition a network file system, so I'd be cautious. If you are confident, then you could certainly try it and may well have success with it. Just remember who is first on the line if there is library corruption...