Sensible Scenarios for Direct-Attached Storage

If you think direct-attached storage only means the boot drive in a server, you need to upgrade your DAS IQ. Today, DAS can mean external storage that supports multiple servers for high-availability cluster computing. And DAS can do this for less money than the more common network-attached storage (NAS) and storage area network (SAN) solutions that first come to mind.

DAS was once the only option for server storage, of course. Early servers with 5.25-inch hard drives that weighed 10...