<NAS != SAN stuff deleted>
Are there any experts out there who can shed some light on the subject?
Bah, it doesn't take an expert in my humble..
Filers are Network attached storage per their original definition. A SAN is a network that is dedicated to storage (summary of definition from the 2 articles that I've read from SunExpert and InfoWorld). Therefore if you happen to plug your NAS into a SAN, then it is part of the SAN by definition.
Just to give your boss an idea of how much this is all chopping words...