There are several types of implementation of NAS. The early implementations and many that are available today use standard servers (UNIX or NT/2000) with NFS or CIFS software to operate as the remote file systems on a local area network. Some versions use standard hardware with a customized (or streamlined) version of the standard operating system to improve performance.

Other implementations use specialized hardware called a “thin server” with custom operating systems (some of which may include a stripped-down kernel of some form of UNIX) to provide more application specific hardware and software to gain performance and reduce cost by not having unnecessary functionality that would exist in a standard server and operating system. Some of these specialized hardware implementations have provided specific data mover engines and separate interface processors to become very performance competitive.