SAN vs. NAS vs. Cloud Object Storage
NewAll three are 'storage', and resumes often list them together, but they do different jobs. A SAN gives servers fast block storage over a dedicated network, used for databases and virtual machines. A NAS shares files over the office network, like a shared drive. Cloud object storage, such as Amazon S3, keeps files as objects reached over the internet, at huge scale. Someone strong in one may never have managed the others.
How to tell them apart on a resume
SAN (block storage)
Fibre Channel, iSCSI, LUNs, zoning, Dell EMC, Pure Storage, HPE, NetApp, storage for VMware and databases.
NAS (file storage)
File shares, NFS, SMB/CIFS, NetApp filers, Synology, quotas and permissions for departments.
Cloud object storage
Amazon S3, Azure Blob Storage, Google Cloud Storage, buckets, lifecycle rules, storage classes, data lakes.
The question that settles it
“Which kind of storage did you manage: a SAN for servers and databases, NAS file shares, or cloud object storage like S3?”
Each term in plain English
- SAN/NAS Storage
Shared storage for a company's servers. A SAN (storage area network) gives servers fast disk space over a dedicated network, often Fibre Channel, and suits databases and virtual machines.
Ask “Which storage systems did you manage, and how much capacity? Tell me about a storage migration or failure you handled.”
- S3
AWS's object storage service, used to store and retrieve files (images, backups, logs, static assets) at massive scale over the internet.
Ask “Have you had to configure an S3 bucket's access permissions yourself? What were you trying to allow or lock down?”
- Backup & Recovery (Veeam, Commvault)
Copying a company's servers, databases and files on a schedule so they can be restored after deletion, corruption, hardware failure or ransomware.
Ask “When did you last restore from backup for real, and how long did it take compared with what the business expected?”
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