Storage systems are popular with two types of technologies and those are File level storage, which is seen and deployed in Network Attached Storage systems and Block level storage which is seen and deployed in Storage Area Network storage. In the article below, we will explain the major difference in between File level storage vs. block level storage.
File Level storage - This storage technology is common to storage system, which is found in hard drives, NAS systems and so on. In this File Level storage, the storage disk is configured with a protocol say NFS or SMB/CIFS and the files are stored and accessed from it in bulk.
- The File level storage is simple to use and implement.
- It stores files and folders and the visibility is the same to the clients accessing and to the system which stores it.
- This level storage is inexpensive to be maintained, when it is compared to its counterpart i.e. block level storage.
- Network attached storage systems usually depend on this file level storage.
- File level storage can handle access control, integrate integration with corporate directories; and so on.
Block Level storage system - In this block level storage, raw volumes of storage are created and each block can be controlled as an individual hard drive. These Blocks are controlled by server based operating systems and each block can be individually formatted with the required file system.
- Block level storage is usually deployed in SAN or storage area network environment.
- This level of storage offers boot-up of systems which are connected to them.
- Block level storage can be used to store files and can work as storage for special applications like databases, Virtual machine file systems and so on.
- Block level storage data transportation is much efficient and reliable.
- Block level storage supports individual formatting of file systems like NFS, NTFS or SMB (Windows) or VMFS (VMware) which are required by the applications.
- Each storage volume can be treated as an independent disk drive and it can be controlled by external server operating system.
- Block level storage uses iSCSI and FCoE protocols for data transfer as SCSI commands act as communication interface in between the initiator and the target.
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