User:Vinimarockstor/sandbox

Rockstor

Rockstor is Linux and BTRFS (Linux b-tree file system) powered and [|open-source] Network Attached Storage (NAS) OS that users can install on a hardware of their choice to build an advanced, superior-performance and easy-to-use NAS at a low cost. With Rockstor, users and organizations can build a NAS solution on commodity hardware of their choice and not be forced to buy []NAS box with proprietary hardware.

Rockstor is currently being used by early adopters, prosumers, DIYers, Makers that have several hundreds GB or more of data with an increasing data footprint. Rockstor is ready to be used by System Admins, IT Managers and Small and Medium Businesses. NAS is perceived to be technically complex device and generally found in the domain of hobbyists, DIYers, geeks etc. Rockstor's mission is to change that perception and make enterprise class NAS easy and affordable for everyone.

Rockstor is built on BTRFS so gives users access to native BTRFS features while adding features like web user-interface, browser based management, server side analytics etc.

BTRFS versus ZFS and other filesystems

The need for multiple filesystems?

The superiority of BTRFS over ZFS is hotly debated. BTRFS is the Linux next generation filesystem deployed in production by companies like Facebook, Fujitsu, Oracle etc, still questions linger about its stability as compared to ZFS. However, improvements in BTRFS are being made fast especially maturing of RAID6 feature, support for metadata heavy features (deleting several snapshots, replication etc.), instilling confidence for it to be widely deployed in production use for enterprise systems. For home and small business use, BTRFS is stable. Major advantage of BTRFS over other filesystems is BTRFS allows users to reconfigure the system while it is online, switch RAID modes, create file-system level snapshots, data and metadata checksumming and many more. . If one of the disks fails, users can remove the disk and rebalance their system without buying a spare disk and with zero downtime. ZFS was designed by Sun Microsystems, and has features like protection against data corruption, support for high storage capacities, efficient data compression, integration of the concepts of filesystem and volume management, snapshots and copy-on-write clones, continuous integrity checking and automatic repair, RAID-Z and native NFSv4 ACLs.

According to Ted T'so in this interview comparing various filesystems, "The consensus of the engineers who attended this workshop was that adding simple extensions to ext3 (to create ext4) was the fastest way to improve the capabilities of Linux’s file system; however, in the long term, it would be necessary to create a new file system to provide support for more advanced features such as file system-level snapshots, and metadata and data checksumming. A number of potential file system technologies were considered for the latter, including the Digital Equipment Corporation’s Advanced File System (AdvFS, which HP/Compaq had offered to make available under an open source license). Ultimately, though, Chris Mason’s Btrfs was thought to have the best long-term prospects"

Comparison with other Open Source NAS Operating Systems

Rockstor is in the same category as open source systems like FreeNAS, the major difference being that Rockstor is powered by Linux and BTRFS as opposed to other solutions that are powered by ZFS (Solaris) and FreeBSD.

History

Rockstor was founded by Suman Chakravartula in 2012.

Rockstor Features

· Linux, BTRFS based open source storage OS. Runs on commodity hardware

· Bit-rot protection, checksums, compression and other advanced filesystem (BTRFS) features

· Simple GUI installer and secure browser based management

· Copy on Write Snapshots of Shares on demand and on schedule

· File sharing and access from Linux, Mac, Windows and Mobile devices

· Instant and efficient Clones of Shares and Snapshots

· Fast and vertical online capacity scaling

· Rock-ons (apps) for media streaming, backup, cloud storage

· REST API for application developers

· Disaster recovery is made easy by Rockstor to Rockstor replication

· Resource monitoring with customizable Dashboard and SNMP

Plug-ins

· Rock-ons for media streaming, backs-ups, cloud storage, syncthing, transmission and BTSync

'''Solutions '''

· Personal Cloud Server

· SMB Cloud Server

· Traditional NAS Server

· Custom Solutions

References