I have been approached by a number of users all confused about the state and future of FlexRAID in light of the upcoming NZFS. First, I need to do some clean up on the naming of the products. FlexRAID: FlexRAID is a concept and not a product in itself. The core essence of that concept [...]
In my original design, NZFS consisted of a minimal kernel mode driver with the bulk of the processing happening in user mode. The motivations were quite simple: kernel mode development is a major pain in the ass and everywhere else! So, avoid it! On top of being very restricted resource wise, one must entirely obey [...]
RAID users are well familiar with this: scrubbing. For those who don’t, scrubbing is a full data scan to check on it integrity. Virtually every RAID implementation relies on scrubbing as part of its maintenance to ensure continuous data integrity. In FlexRAID’s existing implementations, scrubbing is implemented through the Validate and Verify/Force-Sync-Verify tasks. For NZFS, [...]
Get it? NZFS (Not ZFS) similar to GNU (GNU Not UNIX)… With the recent announcement of Storage Spaces by MS, it was clear that FlexRAID needed to step up in order to stay ahead of everyone in the storage pooling space. The current FlexRAID implementation of storage pooling has several key advantages over everything else [...]
I get asked quite often why the heading for FlexRAID states “Storage data management” as opposed to “Data storage management”. Well, FlexRAID concerns itself with the data and not the storage. Hence it concerns itself with storage data (data that is stored) as opposed to transactional/transient data (data that is not stored). Data storage management [...]
What makes FlexRAID very S.M.A.R.T is its proprietary S.M.A.R.T data analysis engine. However, this will be discussed in a different post. For now, here are a few UI spoilers.
- FlexRAID allows you to easily define server shares and manage user permissions to those shares. You can also define hidden shares. – The shares defined in FlexRAID integrate into Windows Share Management interface for more fine tuned management. – Through the Windows Share Management interface, you can define advanced settings including NTFS permissions. – [...]
The FlexRAID redesigns have been finally and fully ported to Linux. With that, FlexRAID now provides a similar and consistent user experience regardless of the platform. Users can choose to run FlexRAID on Windows or on Linux based on their requirements and take advantage of what each platform has to offer. 1. Cruise Control Panel [...]
This is the one feature I have been longing to implement for the longest time. Well, it is finally here. It is important to write bug free and user proof code, but the reality is without full control of the user’s environment, that’s nearly impossible. The next best thing, however, is the ability to auto-correct. [...]
FlexRAID provides the cleanest integration into WHS 2011 out of all solutions out there. FlexRAID requires no plugin and presents its Storage Pool drive as a native NTFS drive to WHS 2011. This means you can add and manage a FlexRAID pool drive just like a regular but massive drive in WHS 2011′s dashboard. 1. [...]
