When a new vehicle is being planned and designed, engineers, system architects, program managers, and acquisition personnel typically debate three procurement options for the subsystems:
- Design their own subsystem and build it themselves
- Hire a contractor to design and build the subsystem
- Locate and buy a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) subsystem
Each approach may get you to the same goal, but each has positive and negative aspects. Those decisions can only be made internally. The white paper Data-At-Rest Build vs. Buy Considerations for Deployed Storage Devices suggests some ideas that should be introduced in any such debate or trade study.
The white paper focuses on data-at-rest (DAR) devices known as network attached storage (NAS) or network file servers. These network-attached storage devices are Ethernet-based and allow network clients to use the device as local storage. A network-attached storage example is shown in Figure 1.
Learn more about the importance of the Technology Readiness Level number when selecting a Network Attached Storage device.