Openfiler is one of the best open source NAS solutions for Enterprises with a number of advanced features. However, not all features are available in the community edition and some key components for production site should be paid. Their web-based management interface is very easy to use even for large scale deployment. Also, the software features the free GNU GPL 2 license enables 3rd party developers to modify the software based on individual unique requirements.
Features of Openfiler:
- Powerful block storage virtualization
- Full iSCSI target support, with support for virtual iSCSI targets for optimal division of storage
- Fibre Channel target support
- Extensive volume and physical storage management support
- Support for large block devices
- Full software RAID management support
- Support for multiple volume groups for optimal storage allocation
- Online volume size and overlying filesystem expansion
- Point-in-time snapshots support with scheduling
- Volume usage reporting
- Synchronous / asynchronous volume migration & replication (manual setup necessary currently)
- iSCSI initiator (manual setup necessary currently)
- Extensive share management features
- Support for multiple shares per volume
- Multi-level share directory tree
- Multi-group based access control on a per-share basis
- Multi-host/network based access control on a per-share basis
- Per-share service activation (NFS, SMB/CIFS, HTTP/WebDAV, FTP with read/write controls)
- Support for auto-created SMB home directories
- Support for SMB/CIFS “shadow copy” feature for snapshot volumes
- Support for public/guest shares
- Accounts management
- Authentication using Pluggable Authentication Modules, configured from the web-interface
- NIS, LDAP, Hesiod, Active Directory (native and mixed modes), NT4 domain controller
- Guest/public account support
- Quota / resource allocation
- Per-volume group-quota management for space and files
- Per-volume user-quota management for space and files
- Per-volume guest-quota management for space and files
- User and group templates support for quota allocation
- Full industry-standard protocol suite
- CIFS/SMB support for Microsoft Windows-based clients
- NFSv3 support for all UNIX clients with support for ACL protocol extensions
- NFSv4 support (testing)\
- FTP support
- Linux distribution back-end for any other customizations
There are some paid options listed below:
- High Availability Cluster/ Failover as well as block-level replication to facilitate disaster recovery
- iSCSI SAN-4-V is designed for production use in environments that demand high performance and strict standards compliance from backend storage.
- Openfiler FC SAN Target allows you to configure virtual block devices, and manage LUN masking for block device exports to SAN initiators.
