Advanced Intelligence Technologies (AI Technologies) have a focused approach to providing solutions involving server and storage that leverages our understanding and expertise within virtualization and apply it to providing improved performance and efficiency for our clients Datacenter environment.

From a server compute perspective, Advanced Intelligence Technologies (AI Technologies) recommend using market leading server technology. Advanced Intelligence Technologies (AI Technologies)’s have a great deal of experience configuring hosts for virtual workloads and we can provide the most effective host solution both from a cost and performance perspective. Advanced Intelligence Technologies (AI Technologies)’s in-house certified technical consultants can happily assist you with any configuration requirement no matter the size of your deployment.

When planning for server or storage, Advanced Intelligence Technologies (AI Technologies) recognizes that an ever-increasing gap is growing between storage demand and IT budgets. IT budgets remain static or shrink over time whilst storage requirements balloon. Advanced Intelligence Technologies (AI Technologies) has invested in technological alliances with key IT vendors that focus on optimizing storage for the virtual data center. Our approach involves consulting with both IT and the business stakeholders to understand the demands of storage and then work with our clients to recommend the right technology for the job.

We offer multiple server portfolio, like rack servers, tower servers and blade servers from various vendors, Dell, HPE, Lenovo… etc. as below:

• Rack servers maximize performance across the widest range of applications and are available with AMD EPYC or Intel Xeon Scalable Processors. Also offered as pre-configured, tested and certified vSAN Ready Nodes. Choose from a complete portfolio of one, two or four-socket rack servers to deliver high core density for your traditional applications, virtualization and cloud-native workloads. PowerEdge rack servers provide the highest performance for a diverse set of workloads. They’re designed to speed deployment and improve application performance for database, high-performance computing, and virtualization environments. As workloads and workplaces become more complex, it becomes more important than ever for businesses to have end-to-end solutions that work together seamlessly.
• Tower servers offer the ideal performance, versatility and quiet operations for small, large, and remote offices. Available in a range of sizes, from mini towers to rack-capable platforms. Available in a range of sizes, from mini-towers to rack-capable platforms. Tower servers are built to solve the challenges of the modern office environment. Featuring quiet, non-disruptive acoustics, and compact form factors, tower servers are available in one-socket configurations for everyday business applications, as well as two-socket options for more advanced computing, virtualization, and power-hungry workloads.
• Blade servers’ solutions let you optimize your IT infrastructure for traditional, new and emerging workloads, and provide a path to a modern, software-defined data center. Learn how a modular approach helps you keep pace with modern business demands and workloads.

Break free from technology silos and time-consuming operational management with flexible modular solutions powered by Intel® Xeon® processors.

• Configure the chassis with scalable modules of compute, storage, and networking fabric.
• Simplify deployment and administration with unified server management software.
• Reduce your total cost of ownership and maximize the lifetime value of IT investments.

Both network-attached storage (NAS) and storage area network (SAN) were developed to solve the problem of making stored data available to a lot of users at once. Each of them provides dedicated storage for a group of users, but they couldn’t be more different in their approach to achieving their mission.

A NAS is a single storage device that serves files over Ethernet and is relatively inexpensive and easy to set up, while a SAN is a tightly coupled network of multiple devices that work with block-based data and is more expensive and complex to set up and manage. From a user perspective, the biggest difference between NAS and SAN is that NAS devices look like volumes on a file server and use protocols like NFS and SMB/CIFS, while SAN-connected disks appear to the user as local drives.

We provide an overview of the differences between NAS and SAN below. We’ll also briefly cover solutions that combine NAS and SAN and offer many of the advanced benefits of SAN without its high cost.

What is NAS?

A NAS is a computer connected to a network that provides file-based data storage services to other devices on the network. The primary strength of NAS is how simple it is to set up and deploy. NAS volumes appear to the user as network mounted volume. The files to be served are typically contained on one or more storage drives, often arranged into logical, redundant storage containers or RAID. The device itself is a network node, much like computers and other TCP/IP devices, all of which maintain their own IP address and can effectively communicate with other networked devices. Although a NAS is usually not designed to be a general-purpose server, NAS vendors and third parties are increasingly offering other software to provide server-like functionality on a NAS.

NAS devices offer an easy way for multiple users in diverse locations to access data, which is valuable when uses are collaborating on projects or sharing information. NAS provides good access controls and security to support collaboration, while also enabling someone who is not an IT professional to administer and manage access to the data. It also offers good fundamental data security through the use of redundant data structures — often RAID — and automatic backup services to local devices and to the cloud.

Benefits of NAS

A NAS is frequently the next step up for a home office or small business that is using DAS (direct attached storage). The move up to NAS results from the desire to share files locally and remotely, having files available 24/7, data redundancy, the ability to replace and upgrade hard drives in the system, and and the availability of other services such as automatic backup.

Summary of NAS Benefits

• Relatively inexpensive
• 24/7 and remote data availability
• Good expandability
• Redundant storage architecture
• Automatic backups to other devices and cloud
• Flexibility

What is SAN?

A SAN is a way to provide users shared access to consolidated, block level data storage, even allowing multiple clients to access files at the same time with very high performance. A SAN enhances the accessibility of storage devices such as disk arrays and tape libraries by making them appear to users as if they were external hard drives on their local system. By providing a separate storage-based network for block data access over high-speed Fibre Channel, and avoiding the limitations of TCP/IP protocols and local area network congestion, a SAN provides the highest access speed available for media and mission critical stored data.

Benefits of SAN

Because it’s considerably more complex and expensive than NAS, SAN is typically used by large corporations and requires administration by an IT staff. For some applications, such as video editing, it’s especially desirable due to its high speed and low latency. Video editing requires fair and prioritized bandwidth usage across the network, which is an advantage of SAN.

A primary strength of a SAN is that all of the file access negotiation happens over Ethernet while the files are served via extremely high-speed Fibre Channel, which translates to very snappy performance on the client workstations, even for very large files. For this reason, SAN is widely used today in collaborative video editing environments.

Summary of SAN Benefits

• Extremely fast data access
• Dedicated network for storage relieves stress on LAN
• Highly expandable
• OS level (block level) access to files
• High quality-of-service for demanding applications such as video editing