General-Purpose NAS: optimized for NFS or FUSE distributed file systems with hundreds or thousands of concurrent users. Smaller file sizes (up to 128MB on average),read intensive, or used as an archive or backup.

Content Repositories: large-file work-loads (several GB), ideal for video capture and delivery applications, as well as file archival. Performance intensive streaming and non-disruptive scaling and for support of write-intensive (e.g., surveillance) and read-intensive (e.g., streaming) workloads.

Typically, media repositories, backup targets, log servers, and streaming video stores require higher throughtput. Small-file workloads may be transaction heavy and require additional compute capacity.

Example: small files such as JPEG or small documents ~32KB, larger documents or MP3 files ~4MB, media archives or backups ~128MB, DVD videos ~4GB, Ultra-high-definition (UHD) video files ~128GB

Will your workload be more write or read intensive? Example: file archival may be write-intensive, while storing documents, images or streaming videos that are often accessed and viewed may be more read-intensive.

GlusterFS usually outperforms NFS, and offers advantages for Containers. NFS may be better for smaller files with random access or with fewer concurrent clients. SMB protocols are used for Windows file systems.

How much data storage capacity will you need? Constraints on the recommendation may drive the configuration by throughput requirements or by storage capacity.