Saturday, August 14, 2010

Openfiler - Convert servers to NAS Appliance

Its very interesting product which I found while surfing the web.  It is Openfiler...

Openfiler converts an industry standard x86/64 architecture system into a full-fledged NAS/SAN appliance or IP storage gateway and provides storage administrators with a powerful tool to cope with burgeoning storage needs. Building upon the popularity of server virtualization technologies such as VMware, Virtual Iron, and Xen, Openfiler can also be deployed as a virtual machine instance. 
This deployment flexibility of Openfiler ensures that storage administrators are able to make the best use of system performance and storage capacity resources when allocating and managing networked storage in a multi-platform environment.
Openfiler addresses all the key data storage concerns:
  • Reliability - Openfiler supports both software and hardware RAID with monitoring and alert facilities; volume snapshot and recovery
  • Availability - Openfiler supports active/passive high availability clustering, MPIO, and block level replication
  • Performance - Linux 2.6 kernel supports the latest CPU, networking and storage hardware
  • Scalability - filesystem scalability to 60TB+, online filesystem and volume growth support






supported. RAID controllers from vendors such as Adaptec, LSI Logic, HP, IBM and Intel are fully compatible, amongst others.
For Fibre Channel, Openfiler support PCI-E and PCI-X host bus adapters from Qlogic and Emulex. Openfiler is compatible with a slew of network interface controllers including Intel and Broadcom based chipsets. For very high bandwidth requirements, 10Gb Ethernet and Infiniband interconnects are excellent options.