What is a computer called that controls access to a network, as well as acting as a file storage device?
Network-attached storage Network-attached storage Network-attached storage (NAS) is a file-level computer data storage server connected to a computer network providing data access to a heterogeneous group of clients. NAS is specialized for serving files either by its hardware, software, or configuration. It is often manufactured as a computer appliance – a purpose-built specialized computer. NAS systems are networked appliances which contain one or more storage drives, often arranged into logical, redundant storage containers or RAID. Network-attached storage removes the responsibility of file serving from other servers on the network. They typically provide access to files using network file sharing protocols such as
Direct-access storage device used the term "File" for direct-access devices. The earliest use of DASD found by the "Google ngram viewer" to refer to storage devices dates from 1968. From then on use of the term grew exponentially. Both drums and data cells have disappeared as products, so DASD remains as a synonym of disk, flash and optical devices. Modern DASD used in mainframes only very rarely consist of single disk-drives. Most commonly "DASD" means large disk arrays utilizing RAID schemes. Current devices emulate CKD on FBA hardware. Direct-access storage device A direct-access storage device (DASD) (pronounced ) is a secondary storage device