Open Storage Server (OSS)

• Intro
• Components
• Features
• Release
• Screenshots

Features
	Fabric Support
	Devices
	User Authentication
	Group Based Security
	Thin Provisioning
	LVM Management
	Snapshots
	Hot Add and Hot Remove
	Volume Replication
	NFS Support
	GlusterFS Support
	System Monitoring

Fabric Support

OSS is unique in that it supports any combination of IP, Fibre Channel or InfiniBand network fabrics simultaneously.

Run Gigabit iSCSI now and move to 10 Gigabit iSCSI next year without changing your storage hardware. Simply purchase a supported 10 Gigabit Ethernet network adapter and install it into your storage server.

Consolidate legacy Fibre Channel storage while at the same time run 10 Gigabit iSCSI on the same storage hardware.

Dramatic reductions in complexity means reduced running costs for your organisation.

Run any combination of iSCSI, Fibre Channel or SRP.

Devices

OSS supports various types of devices for the SAN targets. This includes:

• Entire RAID arrays
• A volume of a RAID array using Logical Volume Management
• Disk images - used for thin provisioning
• DRBD replicated devices

User Authentication

Users can be authenticated based on their:

• iSCSI initiator name
• Fibre Channel WWN
• InfiniBand port GUID

OSS also supports IP address restrictions and CHAP authentication.

Group Based Security

Users are placed into groups. Devices are then assigned to these groups. This is how you control device access for each client machine connecting to the SAN.

Users are added to groups. Devices are then assigned. These are the devices the users will see when they connect to the SAN. In the "mail.group" group, users "backup" and "mail" share the same disk. In the "nfs1.group" and "nfs2.group" groups, each user has their own dedicated disks.

Thin Provisioning

Using disk images as the target devices means you can benefit from the thin provisioning feature.

What is thin provisioning? When disk images are created, the total size of the disk image is not fully allocated on the underlying filesystem. Rather storage is only allocated when it needs to be. This happens without any configuration in the the client connecting to the SAN.

Examples of disk images. The "In Use" column shows the actual allocated storage on the underlying filesystem.

LVM Management

New volume groups are creating from physical volumes in the control panel.

Logical volumes can then be created quickly and easily from the volume groups. These volumes can then be exported as SAN devices or used as image stores for disk images.

Snapshots

Snaphots can be created from existing volumes within seconds.

This allows the administrator to create a new block device which presents an exact copy of a logical volume, frozen at that point in time. Typically this would be used when a backup needs to be performed on the logical volume, but you don't want to halt a live system that is changing the data.

Hot Add and Hot Remove

Devices, users and groups can be added or removed while the SAN is running and without disruption to the existing connected client machines.

Volume Replication

OSS synchronous and asynchronous volume replication. Volumes on the server can be replicated in realtime with another storage server. This allows you to create high availability setups.

NFS Support

Network File System is supported by OSS. The interface makes it easy to add, edit or remove NFS exports.

GlusterFS Support

GlusterFS is a general purpose parallel distributed filesystem capable of scaling to several petabytes and handling thousands of clients. GlusterFS clusters together storage servers, aggregating storage resources and managing data into a single global filesystem.

System Monitoring

The graph based system monitoring allows you to view:

• CPU utilisation
• Memory utilisation
• Disk I/O
• Network I/O

Graph information is available by hour, day, week and month.

Disk I/O information over the current day.