OpenFiler is an easy-to-deploy and easy-to-use distribution that does one thing very well, and that’s serve files to network clients. If you’ve got an older computer or laptop lying around, you can turn that system into a NAS appliance simply by installing OpenFiler and attaching a large USB disk. On the other end of the spectrum, OpenFiler is very well suited for installation on an enterprise-class server where it can act as a part of your corporate SAN.
Linux Addiction has created a really useful guide to setup OpenFiler on an old PC.
I’ve set up quite a few file servers using Linux in my day, and although it’s not particularly difficult, I’ve often thought that there should be a better way to do it. The folks at the OpenFiler Project definitely have built a better mousetrap. The OpenFiler team seems to be inspired by the NetApp filer family of Network Storage Appliances and has come out with an open-source clone that lets you take any x86 computer and give it nearly all the functionality of a NetApp filer.
About OpenFiler
The OpenFiler distribution is an easy-to-install, easy-to-use, nearly turnkey solution. At the time of this writing, the current version is 2.3, and it’s based on rPath, so it’s focused and lean where it needs to be, allowing the developers to pack it with features useful to its main purpose. It’s even lean enough to run on some embedded systems. The feature list is comprehensive, and it compares very well with commercial appliances like those offered by Snap and others. Here are some of OpenFiler’s killer features:
- Full iSCSI target and initiator support.
- Support for Fiber Channel devices (depending on hardware).
- Support for software (md) RAID or hardware RAID.
- On-line volume/filesystem expansion.
- Point-in-time snapshots.
- Synchronous/asynchronous replication of data.
- NFS, SMB/CIFS, HTTP/WebDAV and FTP.
- Supports SMB/CIFS shadow copy for snapshot volumes.
- Supports NIS, LDAP and Windows NT/Active Directory authentication.
- Flexible quota management.
- Easy-to-use Web-based admin GUI.
The only real downside to OpenFiler is that you have to pay for the Administration Guide. The Installation Guide and a downrev version of the Admin Guide are both on-line and available for free, but the current revision of the Admin Guide is available only for paying customers, as this is how the OpenFiler Project is funded. Luckily, OpenFiler is easy to configure, thanks to its GUI, so that isn’t a huge detriment.
Read whole post here (linux-addiction.blogspot.com)
