10gb vs pci cards

[dialbat]

Hello everyone,
i'm a bit confused and probably due to lack of knowledge on the specifics of the subject
Whats are the benefits and drawback connecting server to NAS using 10Gb network vs pci storage adapters?
besides the obvious, not having access to either.
My plan is to setup Proxmox server with number of hosts. I will have a NAS which i'll use for backups and storing/running VMs.
Server has 10Gb ports and NAS has 10Gb ports. There is also an option connecting them directly if i install SAS or SATA pcie cards.

Why would i choose one over the other?
thank you

 

[MountainBofh]

Depends on the speed of the drives in the NAS. For magnetic drives, you'll not really see much difference between 10gb ethernet, and direct attach. For SATA SSD's, 10gb will still be able to keep up. NVMe SSD's are a fair amount faster vs 10gb ethernet.

 

[Chriggel]

Another factor is scalability. At some point, if you need lots of storage, you'll have used all the connectivity of the host or maybe ran out of physical space. If you put the storage somewhere else on the network, you can attach the same amount of storage, or even more, with the same or similar speeds with just one network card in the host. You can then basically grow the storage indefinitely by scaling the storage up or out or both.

You can also easily share the storage between several hosts, or give every host their own.

I have some NAS that are basically just external drives for a single host. The host grew and grew and grew over time, until it just wasn't viable anymore, so it became much smaller in its next iteration and all the storage is now external.

Whether or not you'll be able to benefit from all that depends on your setup and requirements. If you need the storage just for this one host, have enough connectivity and free space and don't need to share storage between hosts, then you'll probably not benefit at all from NAS.

 

[dialbat]

thank you guys for your replies.
my line of thought was, if i already have 10gb cards in both server and nas, instead of buying additional sata/sa cards for both, just use 10gb switch.
In nas i'll have Sata and SSD pools.