The flagship offering from Nexenta Systems, NexentaStor is deployed as a soft-appliance (or VMware-compatible machine) and, when installed, provides for the Enterprise a NAS/iSCSI storage appliance with features including support for unlimited incremental snapshots, block-level mirroring between storage appliances, archive search, and file-system-based virtualization features including thin provisioning and storage pooling (including the ability to pool I/O operations as well as the physical storage itself). Initially, the platform was targeted to Tier-2 NAS deployments; hoewever, with the most recent improvements (including the availability of optional HA and VMware storage management modules) the vendor now state that the product could be used as primary NAS, as well.

At its core, the platform leverages the open source NexentaOS operating system (which in turn is based on the OpenSolaris kernel) and the ZFS file system, which itself supplies several of the virtualization features of the product. NexentaStor ships as a soft-appliance (downloadable or CD) that should be installed on a dedicated machine with hardware requirements similar to that of Solaris 10/OpenSolaris; or as a VMware image (playable on VMware Player, VMware Workstation and VMware Server).

Following installation, each NexentaStor appliance includes the following primary components (all reside on the appliance itself):

- The Nexenta Management Server (NMS), which is the core engine that manages the storage itself. The NMS exposes a common and open API that is accessed and utilized by both the NMC and Web-based NMV (see below).

- The Nexenta Management Console (NMC), a login-based command-line tool for advanced management tasks available from an attached keyboard/monitor or via SSH connections. The NMV can be used to manage a single appliance, multiple, or groups of appliances, and includes features such as command recording and replay (for the creation of task scripts that can be applied to one or more management servers), syntax and parameter validation, and more.

- Nexenta Management View (NMV), a Web-based (GUI) higher-level management tool that provides storage and network views, user management, graphical stats, and the ability to perform common tasks. NMV is accessed via an encrypted (HTTPS) connection.

Additionally, the product includes a pair of Web-accessible GUI configuration wizards. SNMP-based management is also supported, as is E-mail-based alerting.

As mentioned earlier, NexentaStor is based in ZFS, which itself leverages a 128-bit addressing scheme and therefore enjoys support for unlimited snapshots (2 to the 48th power; automated or on-demand with support for retention policies) as well as unlimited file system sizes. Storage wise, data can be accessed via CIFS, NFS, rsync, FTP and iSCSI (iSCSI storage can be discovered and deployed), and stored on local drives (SCSI, SAS, SATA, etc.) or externally attached arrays (iSCSI, FC, Infiniband, etc.). Snapshot features include indexing and boolean search functions.

NexentaStor Enterprise (see below) functionality can be extended via the use of plug-ins, some of which can be downloaded from the NexentaStor site, and others available for purchase. Among the more recent plug-ins touted by the vendor are the WORM plug-in, for write-once read-many storage; the VM Data Center plug-in, which discovers ESX servers and their VMs and provides the ability to establish replication policies for VMs as well as perform common VM management tasks; and the Simple High Availability plug-in, which allows two or more NexentaStor instances to act as an HA group.

New features in the latest NexentaStor release include Active Directory support and the aforementioned WORM, HA, and VMware plug-ins.

NexentaStor is available in Developer and Enterprise Editions.

The Developer edition is a free download that supports only 1 TB of used storage (but unlimited amounts of attached storage); once the 1 TB limit is reached the data itself remains accessible but the management and functional aspects of the software (CLI, GUI, scheduled snapshots, automated reporting, etc.) will cease to function. Technical support and software upgrades are not available for the Developer Edition; and the plug-ins described above are also not supported.

The Enterprise Edition supports up to unlimited storage and includes one year of software upgrades and support baked into the price. The Enterprise Edition also supports the use of the plug-ins described above. Enterprise Edition pricing starts at $1,100 for 4 TB of capacity; additional capacity is available in multiple increments.

For a limited time, the HA and VMware plug-ins are included in the Enterprise pricing; after the introductory offer the prices are expected to be $1,200 per module. The WORM module is priced at $500.

Finally, a free 30-day trial of the Enterprise version is also available, with the HA and VMware modules available upon request and limited support.

Visit the vendor's Web site for further information.