One manner of seeing JBOD systems is that they're quite literally "Just a Bunch of Disks". Data administrators use this configuration in order to put to good use the aging hard drives at their disposal. When one is managing these kinds of setups, it is unavoidable to be faced with a ton of obsolete hardware after every two years if not a year. Hardware gets obsolete in a shorter span of time compared with other things. The drive in your desktop right now, could be obsolete now. Every day is a day when new storage devices with bigger capacities and cheaper prices get introduced in the market. But rather than just throwing your old drives away, you could opt to put them in one of these types of devices.
This is where terminologies such as Desktop RAID, NAS, cloud storage come in. If you decide on getting a RAID system, for example you can combine your old hard drives who may have odd storage capacities into one singular but large virtual drive. For instance, you may have at your disposal old and dusty disk drives which have capacities of 10 GB, 20, GB and 40 GB. Now those three wouldn't fit in most desktop systems right? So you get them in a JBOD-RAID system and when you access the drives you only see a 70 GB drive.
That's the beauty of these different storage systems, you get to pick one for a particular purpose that your organization or company needs. For instance, these devices or systems are good for archiving. RAID is good for close to paranoid backup systems because they provide multiple redundancies and NAS is good for networked backups.
For instance, if you have a JBOD system, you can get some old and dusty hard drives that are just lying in the corner and then put them in an enclosure to combine into one single virtual drive. This is useful whenever you want to backup not so critical information that's needed to be backed up.
Simplicity is the core of these backup technologies. Though they really do get complicated when you take into consideration the vast variety of hardware and configuration that needs to be done, you just have to remember the core and the most basic requirement for having them - which is to create backups. For every system, there is a corresponding use. Some are better than others when it comes to access, and some are better than others when it comes to reliability.
Once you research further, you will encounter the terms "spanning" and "concatenation". They are practically just the technical terminology to describe the process when you combine two or more hard drives into a single drive.
In every system there are also disadvantages. JBODs become problematic when one of the physical drives conk out. Though RAID systems are very hardy when it comes to backup, they can be quite difficult to maintain and configure specially if you don't have a full time IT Manager. Since NAS are entirely network reliant, they tend to clog up the network connections. These are the down sides to each system, if you are in a position to decide which one your company needs, it's best that you consult with peers who have had experience with each so that you'll get a fuller picture of your data storage needs.
All in all, these are the advantages and disadvantages of the different types of storage systems. JBOD in particular is one of the more affordable storage solutions that is easier to maintain. RAID on the other hand, may not be as cheap but it provides the peace of mind afforded by redundancy. At the end of the day, the thing that must be asked is "What for?" Figuring out the precise need of your organization would help a lot when determining your data storage hardware requirements.
This is where terminologies such as Desktop RAID, NAS, cloud storage come in. If you decide on getting a RAID system, for example you can combine your old hard drives who may have odd storage capacities into one singular but large virtual drive. For instance, you may have at your disposal old and dusty disk drives which have capacities of 10 GB, 20, GB and 40 GB. Now those three wouldn't fit in most desktop systems right? So you get them in a JBOD-RAID system and when you access the drives you only see a 70 GB drive.
That's the beauty of these different storage systems, you get to pick one for a particular purpose that your organization or company needs. For instance, these devices or systems are good for archiving. RAID is good for close to paranoid backup systems because they provide multiple redundancies and NAS is good for networked backups.
For instance, if you have a JBOD system, you can get some old and dusty hard drives that are just lying in the corner and then put them in an enclosure to combine into one single virtual drive. This is useful whenever you want to backup not so critical information that's needed to be backed up.
Simplicity is the core of these backup technologies. Though they really do get complicated when you take into consideration the vast variety of hardware and configuration that needs to be done, you just have to remember the core and the most basic requirement for having them - which is to create backups. For every system, there is a corresponding use. Some are better than others when it comes to access, and some are better than others when it comes to reliability.
Once you research further, you will encounter the terms "spanning" and "concatenation". They are practically just the technical terminology to describe the process when you combine two or more hard drives into a single drive.
In every system there are also disadvantages. JBODs become problematic when one of the physical drives conk out. Though RAID systems are very hardy when it comes to backup, they can be quite difficult to maintain and configure specially if you don't have a full time IT Manager. Since NAS are entirely network reliant, they tend to clog up the network connections. These are the down sides to each system, if you are in a position to decide which one your company needs, it's best that you consult with peers who have had experience with each so that you'll get a fuller picture of your data storage needs.
All in all, these are the advantages and disadvantages of the different types of storage systems. JBOD in particular is one of the more affordable storage solutions that is easier to maintain. RAID on the other hand, may not be as cheap but it provides the peace of mind afforded by redundancy. At the end of the day, the thing that must be asked is "What for?" Figuring out the precise need of your organization would help a lot when determining your data storage hardware requirements.
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