Openfiler is a powerful, intuitive browser-based network storage software distribution. Openfiler delivers file-based Network Attached Storage and block-based Storage Area Networking in a single framework.

Openfiler sits atop of CentOS Linux (which is derived from sources freely provided to the public by a prominent North American Enterprise Linux vendor). It is distributed as a stand-alone Linux distribution. The entire software stack interfaces with third-party software that is all open source.

File-based networking protocols supported by Openfiler include: NFS, SMB/CIFS, HTTP/WebDAV and FTP. Network directories supported by Openfiler include NIS, LDAP (with support for SMB/CIFS encrypted passwords), Active Directory (in native and mixed modes) and Hesiod. Authentication protocols include Kerberos 5. Openfiler includes support for volume-based partitioning, iSCSI (initiator), scheduled snapshots, resource quota, and a single unified interface for share management which makes allocating shares for various network file-system protocols a breeze.

The following are just some of the features currently available (unless indicated otherwise) in Openfiler.

* Powerful virtualization
o Point-in-time snapshot support with scheduling
o Online volume size expansion (testing)
o Volume usage reporting
o Support for multiple volume groups for optimal storage allocation
o iSCSI initiator (manual currently)
o Volume migration & replication (manual currently)
* Accounts management
o Authentication using Pluggable Authentication Modules, configured from the web-interface
o NIS, LDAP, Hesiod, Active Directory (native and mixed modes), NT4 domain controller
o Guest/public account support
* Quota / resource allocation
o Per-volume group-quota management for space and files
o Per-volume user-quota management for space and files
o Per-volume guest-quota management for space and files
o User and group templates support for quota allocation
* Extensive share management features
o Per-volume based share creation
o Multi-level share directory tree
o Multi-group based access control on a per-share basis
o Multi-host/network based access control on a per-share basis
o Per-share service activation (NFS, SMB/CIFS, HTTP/WebDAV, FTP)
o Support for auto-created SMB home directories
* Full industry-standard protocol suite
o CIFS/SMB support for Microsoft Windows-based clients
o NFSv3 support for all UNIX clients with support for ACL protocol extensions
o NFSv4 support (testing)
o FTP support
o WebDAV and HTTP 1.1 support
o Linux distribution back-end for any other customizations
o Open source provides you the power to modify and deploy software if you want to do so