Near-Line Storage

What Does Near-Line Storage Mean?

Near-line storage is a type of storage medium that is external to a computer and provides quick and scalable access to storage devices/capacity within an IT environment. This term refers to any storage architecture, infrastructure or technology that resides between online and offline storage sources.

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Techopedia Explains Near-Line Storage

Near-line storage is primarily used in enterprise-class data centers, data warehouses and IT environments. It is most often used to store data permanently and provide on-demand access to stored data, usually over a network/Internet connection. It cannot be immediately provisioned but doesn’t require any manual help as is required in removable or offline storage.

Near-line storage devices include massive array of idle disks (MAID), automated tape libraries and SATA based disk RAID systems.

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Margaret Rouse

Margaret Rouse is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical, business audience. Over the past twenty years her explanations have appeared on TechTarget websites and she's been cited as an authority in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine and Discovery Magazine.Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages. If you have a suggestion for a new definition or how to improve a technical explanation, please email Margaret or contact her…