Which of the following will you use?

You work as a Server Administrator for company Inc. The company has a Windows 2008 based
network environment. There are thirty client computers running Windows 7 and three servers
running Windows Server 2008 R2. You need to implement a system in the network that provides
data access to heterogeneous network clients using SMB/CIFS. Which of the following will you use?

A.
Storage area network

B.
Failover clustering

C.
Datafile striping

D.
Network-attached storage

Explanation:
You should use Network-attached storage (NAS). Network-attached storage (NAS) is file-level
computer data storage connected to a computer network providing data access to heterogeneous
network clients. NAS systems contain one or more hard disks, often arranged into logical, redundant
storage containers or RAID arrays. It removes the responsibility of file serving from other servers on
the network. NAS uses file-based protocols, such as NFS, SMB/CIFS, or AFP. NAS units rarely limit
clients to a single protocol.

A is incorrect. Storage Area Networks are a specialized RAID array that can be accessed by
multiple servers over a specialized network connection. A host bus adapter is required on servers
that use the Storage Area Networks. The Storage Area Networks administrator partitions the
available storage into logical unit numbers and assigns them to the servers. The disk volume shown
in Disk manager is logical unit numbers.

C is incorrect. Datafile striping, also referred to as striping, is a technique used to enhance
the I/O of datafiles. In this technique, a large datafile is split into smaller datafiles and the latter are
then stored on separate disks. Hence, striping allows quicker I/Os by reading or writing through

multiple read-write heads of the disks (which store the datafiles that have been split) operating in
parallel. This technique is of great help in parallel processing where throughput is of prime concern.

B is incorrect. Failover clustering is a technique used in the Windows Server 2008
environment to provide high availability of applications.