NSS File System on Linux

Richard Jones

Product Manager

Novell, Inc.

Linux Storage Overview

Novell File System on Linux

Running NSS on Linux

File Protocols on Linux

NetStorage single Web view

Q&A

Agenda

Linux Storage Overview

Linux Storage Architecture

Linux File System Design Goals

Multiple hardware devices - provide access to many different hardware devices

Multiple logical file systems - support many different logical file systems

Multiple executable formats - support several different executable file formats (like a.out, ELF, java)

Homogeneity - present a common interface to all of the logical file systems and all hardware devices

Performance - provide high-speed access to files

Safety - do not lose or corrupt data

Security - restrict user access to access files; restrict user total file size with quotas

Linux Architecture

Virtual File Services (VFS)

Logical Volume Manager (LVM)

Device Drivers

LAN Drivers

EXT3

XFS

NFS

(client)

SAMBA

(client)

Network

Protocols

User

Kernel

Applications and Services

Reiser

Linux File Systems

All are POSIX semantics compliant

Case Sensitive

Single data stream

Unix namespace (only)

Simple access controls

Read, Write, and eXecute for Owner, Group, and World

All Compete

Performance

Scalability

Linux File Systems

Why So Many?

EXT2

EXT3

Reiser

XFS

JFS

UFS

Veritas

GFS

GPFS

PolyServe

etc.

1- Backward Compatibility

Migration from UNIX

Mount UNIX Data Directly

Support same disk format as UNIX data

Direct Mount

No data copy

Same or Similar Management Tools

Familiar interfaces

Familiar functions

Little to no retraining required

Examples

JFS, XFS, UFS, Veritas, EXTx, Reiser

2- Performance & Scalability

Performance

Fast File System

“Speed Wars”

Speed with large data sets

Scalability

Parallel File System

Lots of throughput for large HPC Clusters

Large Databases

Millions of Files

Lots of files in a subdirectory

Examples

PolyServe, Lustre, CVxFS, GFS, GPFS

Novell File System on Linux

Novell Storage Services (NSS)

Novell File System

Designed for Shared File Serving

The PC LAN File System for Workgroup collaboration

20 Years of features

Novell Traditional FS

NetWare® 2.x-4.x

Feature rich workhorse

But not scalable to 100 Gigabyte systems

NSS File System

Introduced in NetWare 5

Scalable, Journal based File System

NSS is not just “another” file system!

Rich Features in NSS

Security

Visibility Feature

Access Control

Trustee Model

Rich and Granular

Manageability

Trustees as opposed to Access Control Lists

Inheritance

Heterogeneous Client Support

Multiple simultaneous namespace

Rich File and Directory Attributes

NSS on Linux Architecture

Virtual File Services (VFS)

Enterprise Volume Management System (EVMS)

Device Drivers

EXT3

Reiser

XFS

NSS

User

Kernel

Media Manager Logic

Linux Semantic

Agent

Edir

Handler

_Admin

Management

Up

call

NCP

Samba

NSS is Unique

NSS is Unique compared to all others

Backlink is fundamental (the zNode)

Filename is an attribute of the file

Children know their parents

This is key to the unique features in NSS

Unique NSS Features—Visibility

HR Issues

Budget

Users

Sam

Joe

Amy

a.txt

b.txt

x.doc

y.doc

n.mpg

o.mpg

Joe’s view on

other FS’s

HR Issues

Budget

Users

Sam

Joe

Amy

x.doc

y.doc

Joe’s view on

NSS

Users

Joe

x.doc

y.doc

Visibility—Continued

Amy wants Joe to see o.mpg

n.mpg

o.mpg

Joe’s view on

other FS’s

HR Issues

Budget

Users

Sam

Joe

Amy

x.doc

y.doc

Joe’s view on

NSS

Users

Joe

x.doc

y.doc

o.mpg

Amy

Value of NSS Visibility

Security

Users only see what they are supposed to

Consolidate file systems

Easily share what needs to be shared

Avoid security breeches

Simple Management

Predictable management

No need for a “share per user”

Less time & effort needed

Rights Calculation

/

HR Issues

Budget

Users

sam

joe

amy

x.doc

y.doc

/

Users

joe

x.doc

y.doc

Trustee model for granting/calculating rights

In other FS’s, admin must stamp each directory in the path to Joe’s home directory. In NSS, only need to stamp trustee on Joe’s home directory.

Multiple Trustees can be assigned all with different rights

ACL Model for granting/calculating rights

Value of Trustee Model

Simple Management

Automatic and quick

Only one trustee needed, not whole path

Less time spent managing access

Manage changing organizations

Easy to maintain changing access needs

Avoids security mistakes

Flexibility

Many Trustees

Different users/groups with different rights to a directory/file

Simple/quick to add, remove or change

Unique NSS Features—Access Control

NSS – Trustee Rights	Linux/UNIX - ACLs

Supervisor (grant rights to others)	Set UID (advanced)

Read	Read

Write	Write

Create	-

Erase	-

Modify (change file attributes)	-

FileScan (view)	-

Access Control (change rights)	-

Note: in NSS, X (execute) is a file attribute, not a right.

Value of Trustee Rights

Granular Management

More options

Grant access to only exactly what is needed

Support heterogeneous clients

Supports Windows rights model

Windows NTFS rights is a derivative of NetWare® 2.x rights model

Supports Macintosh rights model

Unique NSS Features—Inheritance

/

RF

Users

sam

joe

amy

x.doc

y.doc

Trustee rights granted flow down directory tree unless filtered. Simplifies management.

n.mpg

o.mpg

/

RF

Users

sam

joe

amy

x.doc

y.doc

Filtering out all (or subset inherited rights at “amy”

Filter out all

Value of Inheritance & IRF

Simplifies Management

Inheritance automatically gives rights down

No need to explicitly stamp ACLs down a directory tree.

Subdirectories created inherit specific from above, not a global UMASK value.

More deterministic

Inherited Rights Filters

Fine Grained control when needed

Block inherited rights to hide just one subdirectory tree

Example: A staging directory

Unique NSS Features—Rich Attributes

Unique NSS Features—Name Space

Rich Name Space Types

Multiple data streams per file
(full Windows & Mac support)

4 simultaneous name spaces

UNIX (case sensitive)

8.3 DOS (case insensitive)

Windows Long (case insensitive)

Macintosh (case insensitive)

Unique NSS Features —Directory Restrictions

Directory Space restrictions

Limit the amount of space a given directory and its subdirectories can consume

Not offered in other file systems

User Space restrictions

Limit the amount of space a given user can consume on a volume

Like other file systems

Unique NSS Features—Salvage

Salvage

Implemented in the file system - available to all services.

Unlike GUI Trash can which is only implemented in the GUI system
(eg: Windows Explorer)

If a program, virus, or terminal session (command prompt) deletes a file, it can be recovered!

Unique NSS Features—File Events

Event File List

Tracks and logs changes to files and their metadata

For application developers

Enables Novell Archive and Versioning Server

Key technology for Information Lifecycle Management Applications

Unique NSS Features —Directory Integration

Rich multi-user managability/security –
tied into Novell eDirectory™

Novell eDirectory GUIDs used
for Trustees

Enterprise wide identity
management

Unique NSS Features—Confidentiality

Data Shredding
(meets US government requirements)

Configurable up to seven passes of different byte patterns

Feature built into file system, not an add-on

Value Summary

Secure, Rich, Managable Shared-File System

The best choice for PC File Serving/sharing

Designed to manage volumes accessed by thousands of users

Unsurpassed Security: Users only see what they are supposed to see

Easy/quick to modify access rights

Compatibility

Full semantic support for a wide range of client and server OSes.

Rich metadata capabilities: Superset of all other systems.

Will Novell support NSS Only?

No.

Pick the right tool for the right job:

Choose the workload!

For clustered database: Pick a good clustered Linux FS like Polyserve

SEE TUT293

For simple database: Pick default Linux FS like Reiser or EXT3

SEE TUT106

For Shared User data: Pick NSS

For HPC: Pick Lustre

Also look at staff training/familiarity

For Mainframe Data migration: Pick VxFS (Veritas) or JFS (IBM) based on existing data format & training on Unix systems

Running NSS on Linux

For the NetWare Savvy

Familiar tools and commands

NSS Management Utility (NSSMU)

/opt/novell/nss/sbin/nssmu

Same look and feel as on NetWare

Note: Create partitions through the “Pools” menu

Use evmsgui for advanced partition management

NSS Console (NSSCON)

/opt/novell/nss/sbin/nsscon

The NSS set parameters and functions of the NetWare Console

For the NetWare Savvy—Continued

Familiar tools and commands

NSS Start-up Parameters

/opt/novell/nss/conf/nssstart.cfg

The Start-up Parameters for NSS (can cut and past from NetWare)

Rights Utility

/opt/novell/nss/sbin/rights

View, modify and set Trustee rights from commandline/script

Attributes Utility

/opt/novell/nss/sbin/attrib

View, modify and set NSS Attributes from commandline/script

For the Linux Savvy

Familiar tools and commands

mkfs

Standard Linux create file system command

mkfs –t nsspool –n <poolname> <device>

mkfs –t nssvol –n <volumename> <pool>

Note: NSS volumes created using mkfs cannot be mounted by NetWare Servers (they are in Linux partitions, not NetWare partitions)

mount

mount –t nsspool <mountpoint> <device> -o name = <poolname>,[shared]

mount –t nssvol <mountpoint> <poolname> -o name=<volumename>,[ns= unix, long, mac, or dos]

For the Linux Savvy—continued

Familiar tools and commands

Cd, ls, chmod, etc.

Standard Linux shell commands

Note: chmod only works with POSIX rights, use rights command for Trustee management

EVMS (Enterprise Volume Management System)

evmsgui

Volume Manager to manage NetWare partitions and containers that were created by NetWare

NSS on Linux – Single Disk Servers

Issues with single disk device machines

Use only for demo machines which have 1 disk only

EVMS is required to manage NSS partitions

So must install OES Linux using EVMS

Procedure in the documentation

For experts only

Recommend a SAN, with NSS on its own LUNs

Simplifies installation & management

Install OS using default volume manager

Backup NSS

SMS & TSA

Same as on NetWare, full metadata support

Compatible backups

Future

Open Source SMS

Standards based

Specific features/functions for backup

Features for Information Lifecycle Management

Event tracking

Focused on higher level applications

Granular data types

Database records

Data associations preserved

Emails in a mail box

Backup Vendors

Backup Vendor support pledged at Novell Open Enterprise Server Ship

CommVault

BakBone

Backup Vendor support pledged in Q1 of Novell Open Enterprise Server Ship

SyncSort

Veritas

Virus Scanning Vendors

Virus Scanning Vendor support pledged at Novell Open Enterprise Server Ship

Trend Micro

Computer Associates

Virus Scanning Vendor support pledged in one quarter of Novell Open Enterprise Server Ship date

McAfee

File System Factory

FSF for policy based automated Storage Management

Automate storage Provisioning & Deprovisioning

Storage follows users/groups

Load balance home directories automatically

FSF Brainshare Sessions

BUS145

TUT348

Futures

Future Directions

64-bit native execution

Opteron, EM64T CPUs native

Tighter semantic integration with Protocols

Samba, NFS v4, NetAtalk

Exabyte volumes

NSS current volume size limit is 8 TB

File Protocols on Linux

SAMBA

SAMBA = Open Source Windows Networking Protocols

CIFS plus Domain Controller emulation

Native File Access for Windows using Open Source

Samba v3 initially, with Authentication via eDirectory

Primary Domain Controller to Windows Clients.

eDirectory as the Identity management base

Map to NSS through POSIX Initially

Lack file system management via CIFS verbs

Must use NetStorage to manage FS trustees

Do benefit from NSS inheritance and Visibility

Samba configuration parameters managed by eDirectory

SAMBA v4

Samba v4 enhancements

Defined interface between protocol and file system

Will be able to plug into semantically rich file system

Novell will integrate into NSS for richness directly to the Protocol.

Improved AD Protocol support

Hooked into eDirectory

NFS

Open Source NFS v2 & v3 today

Hooking authentication into eDir Kerberos KDC

NFS v4 in the future

OSS currently working on NFS v4

Hooked into eDir Kerberos KDC

Authentication system enterprise wide

Not on NetWare Kernel.

NFS

NCP

Novell NetWare Core Protocol

For NetWare Client Workstations

Latest Win 9x (v3.40)

Win NT/2k/XP (v4.83, 4.9x)

NDSRSA authentication

SYS Volume support

/usr/novell/sys public and login files

TCP/IP only

Can work with file systems other than NSS in degraded mode

Apple Filing Protocol

NetATalk

Download from Open Source

Future Authentication hooked to eDir (older 2 way and newer Kerberos)

Officially supported in future OES release

FTP

Standard FTP OSS of Linux

Authentication hooked into eDirectory

via LUM/PAM

FTP

NetStorage Single Web View

NetStorage Overview

Features

HTML View

Virtual Office

Direct URL

Copy/Delete/Rename/New

Upload/Download

Properties/Trustees

File Version/Archive

WebDAV

Windows & internet Explorer

Konquor

NetStorage Features

Copy, Move, Rename, Delete, New Folder

Download

Edit

View

UpLoad

Properties

File Attributes

NetWare Trustees

UNIX/Linux ACLs

Archive

View file versions

Restore a version

WebDAV

Storage Locations

For non Novell Open Enterprise Server, non-loginscript storage

Windows Servers

UNIX/Linux servers

Other

Storage from different sources and platforms aggregated into a single Web view

Home Directory

Novell eDirectory Home Directory attribute

Shows Home Directory in view

Mapped Drives

Executes NetWare Login Script

Displays all resources that would be mapped as drives by the login script on a Novell Client.

Does not execute ALL Login Script logic

Does handle conditionals that don't depend on environment variables

Group membership, time, date

Does not handle program execution

Novell iFolder

Shows files in users iFolder

Must supply passphrase to decrypt

NetStorage Value

Web interface

Securely access files from any browser/platform

Internet access from anywhere/any machine

Single view to all storage

Files from OES, Windows, Linux, iFolder, etc.

Reduce searching

Management

Manage trustee rights, POSIX ACLs

Recover deleted files

Retrieve file versions

Archive and Versioning server

From any platform!

Questions and Answers

This presentation is technical in nature, but illustrates what Novell NetWare customers have taken for granted for two decades. The Novell file system is very unique, and no other file systems on planet earth have the features illustrated in this presentation.

These are the storage goals set out by Linus Torvalds when he developed Linux.

Linux includes a multiplexing layer to abstract file system details from applications. Applications talk to one interface (the Virtual File Services) irregardless of the file system (local or remote) below.

Linus and Unix file systems all conform to POSIX standards. For line of business applications running in a datacenter (CRM, ERP, Database, etc.) POSIX is sufficient. However for secure shared file services for end user workstations, the posix capabilities can be very limiting.

On Linux, there are about 20 file systems in existence.

There are two reasons for this:

1) To allow for migration (Mainframe or Unix files on SANs can be directly migrated and mounted on Linux without undergoing expensive and risky data transformations or copies.)

Second reason for this:

2) To allow for more scalability (more files, faster, cluster more machines to scale file access, etc.)

Novell's file system is unique. the rest of this presentation illustrates the uniqueness and value compared to all other file systems, including Microsoft's NTFS.

Novell’s file system is effectively a superset of features of all ogher file systems. It defined the LAN workgroup space as Novell pioneered building workgroup LAN connectivity.

Windows 2003 now has same level of support as NetWare 5.1 – a switch to turn off autoactivation. It is turned off by default in Enterprise and Datacenter, and is on by default in blade and standard editions of Windows 2003 server

No other file system has directories and files back linked. All other file systems are designed in what is known as an iNode fashion. The parent directories have links to the files and subdirectories in them, but those subdirectories and files do NOT have a link back to their parent. Novell's traditional File system and NSS file systems are unique in that the files and subdirectories have links back to their parent directory. This allows for the features outlined in the next slides.

Windows, UNIX and Linux file systems allow users to see all subdirectories at a given level where they have rights to one or more of those subdirectories. On these systems, users cannot change directory into those subdirectories to which they don't have rights, but they still see the name and the fact that such a directory exists in the system. With NSS, the user ONLY sees the subdirectories to which they have rights.

In Spring of 2002, a customer related the following story to one of our product managers at a trade show:

We had migrated to Windows from NetWare like so many others have done. One of our team’s had a shared area on a file server. The manager had created a subdirectory called “HRIssues” at the same level as the teams working directory where they shared project data. Under NetWare, the employees could not see this directory. However, under Windows, all the employees with rights to the project directory could see it. When attempting to access the “HRIssues” directory, they would get an “Access Denied” error back. It was about 6 weeks later when one of the employees was able to obtain a password which gave him access to the “HRIssues” subdirectory. Our IT department was first blamed, and questions raised as to “how could this have happened?” We explained that this was the difference between NetWare and Windows. The File servers were subsequently migrated back to NetWare, while all the other servers have remained on Windows.

NSS on Linux brings this capability to Linux!

To further illustrate this point, if a file needs to be shared, under all other systems the person being shared the file will see all other files in the subdirectory. With NSS, only the file being shared is visible.

Many NetWare administrators take these features for granted. In a recent Novell Category Specialist training, many Category Specialists indicated that NSS Visibility has been the key that “saved” NetWare from moving to Windows.

Now this feature is coming to Linux!

The value of visibility is un-equalled security in a shared system. Users, Services, and others ONLY see what they are allowed to see. This has been one of Novell’s hallmarks in the industry. Now Novell is bringing this capability to Linux!

How are rights calculated? Since the files and subdirectories know their parents, in NSS, the rights are calculated from where they are granted up to the root. This enables visibility.

But also, this makes management of shared file system rights for many employees (end users) much easier. To grant rights to Joe in NSS, only one Access Control List (ACL) needs to be applied at Joe's directory (the red dot). The visitility is automated by the system. In all other file systems, Joe's access rights must be stamped at each level down to his subdirectory (the red dots). Many systems have tools which automate that process, such as with Windows. One customer told us that they had two divisions that merged in their company, and they needed to grant rights to both divisions to each others shared file servers which were on Windows 2000. The file systems had tens of thousands of files and gigabytes of data. They granted the rights, and the server went to 100% CPU utilization, hard disk lights on constantly, and access to the server was effectively dead for just under 72 hours! The access rights were being stamped on every subdirectory and every file throughout the gigabytes of file system automatically in the background. With NSS this would have taken a millisecond with no delays nor high CPU utilization.

Due to the trustee model having inheritance, administration of rights and access is easier in a complex shared environment. Instead of having to stamp access rights in various places to achieve the desired outcome, the file system does it automatically for the administrator. Other file systems (like NTFS) have tools to help automate the task of stamping rights, but a change to a large directory structure has been reported to peg server utilization at 100% for up to 72 hours on Win2000. On NSS, the same change takes a fraction of a second.

Novell's NSS has a rich access control model, which is best suited for shared file systems where granular access control and security are required. Compared to standard POSIX access rights, the table shows the difference.

Granted, Microsoft Windows has a richer ACL model than Unix/Linux. It must be noted that Microsoft's model is a direct derivative of Novell's NetWare 2.x file system access control model from the Mid 1980s. Novell defined networking and shared access controls for Microsoft DOS back in the pre-Windows days, so Microsoft had to follow that model in order to provide backwards compatibility. NSS completely and fully supports the ACL model expected by Windows desktops, whereas Unix/Linux POSIX ACLs cannot support what Windows desktops expect.

Since the ACL model of NSS is different and unique from all other models, Novell calls it the Trustee Model as opposed to Access Control Lists. The value of the Trustee model, and that the file system is linked in both directions, is that ACL's granted are inherited down the subdirectory tree. This makes for more efficient management of granting rights.

Inherited rights can be filtered at any level in the subdirectory tree to allow even more flexibility. The next slide illustrates this.

When rights are granted (Read and File Scan in this example), those rights flow down to all file and subdirectories below that point. However, if the are not desired to flow further down, then an inherited rights filter can be placed to remove those rights inherited from parent directories as illustrated on the right.

This gives flexibility and ease of management of shared file systems where lots of users are involved. This is why so many customers indicate that it takes fewer administrators to adminster NetWare file servers than it does to administer Windows or Linux file servers. Now with this capability and file system being brought to Linux, this value will also be available on Linux servers!

The value is that the file system greatly simplifies the amount of work required to make changes to follow organizational changes in a corporation. Groups and teams merge or are split, and access rights need to be modified to reflect this in ever changing organizations. NSS makes this task quick and simple.

As can be seen, NSS has a very rich file attribute set for any operation and system needed. This enables rich applications, and efficient support of data protection tools such as backup/restore and hierarchical storage management. The “Remote Data Access” bit indicates that a file has been migrated to cheaper or offline storage.

Contrast this with standard POSIX attributes of which there are only 5: Last access time, Last time modified, Last time attributes changed, Byte size, Number of 512 byte blocks the file occupies on disk.

While NTFS supports multiple datastreams, unicode and multiple namespaces, NSS goes further with more namespace support.

Compared to POSIX file systems, nothing like this exists on Linux. The Linux “Extended Attributes” package is limited to 4K per file, as opposed to NSS which has a full datastream available for extended attributes. This allows for full support of Windows desktops.

The “name mangeling” algorithms between name spaces are efficient to millions of files of similar long names in a subdirectory. Other file systems start to slow considerably at more than 5,000 files in a subdirectory.

While all other file systems support User Space restrictions, NSS's doubly linked system allows it to be unique in supporting directory space restrictions. This means that a subdirectory can be restricted to how much data is allowed in it, irregardless of who is putting the data there. No other file systems can do that.

The GUI Trash can makes most people think they have a file system “Salvage”, however, this ONLY applies to files which the user specifically deletes from the GUI. Files deleted from a command prompt or terminal session , or by an application or virus are lost forever.

With NSS, salvage has been the number one feature requested by IT departments, as it is simple to restore a file which was accidently deleted in the file system.

In NetWare 6.5, Novell added the Event File List which allows Information Life Cycle type services and applications to generate epoch based event tracking, including multiple outstanding on the same file system.

What this means is that applications don't have to “Dredge” the file system in order to perform actions based on usage and change that occurs under normal operations. The File System can tell those applications exactly what happened.

This technology is at the heart of Novell's File Archive and Versioning server that was included in NW6.5 and will come in a later revision of OES for Linux.

The file system access control Ids are the same as the users object ID (Globally unique ID – GUID) in eDirectory. This means that their access rights are unique throughout the tree, and are unique in the world. This ties the file system management rights to the eDirectory identity management system, so the same identity is used across the system.

All other file systems have add on features to allow for data shredding. With NSS, the convenience of having this built in gives value. NSS supports US government requirements of up to 7 passes of specific datapatterns for shreading data.

Doesn't Enron wish they had this :)

NSS is truly the file system of the future. With both richness, unsurpassed security, and performance. Now brought to Linux is enabling Linux to be enterprise worthy.

Each type of workload and data has different requirements. NSS file system with its granular and rich security and file access management systems is perfect for shared file systems where thousands of users need to have the right access, and prevented from the wrong access to files. The ease of management of NSS allows administrators to manage the fluid changes that occur in any organization with respect to who gets rights to what and when.

Other workloads, such as an Oracle Database, do not need to manage secure access controls for multiple users, since only one process, the Oracle Database, is accessing the file system. In this case, a file system specifically designed to allow high performance and scalable Oracle support is the best. You don't need the richness that NSS offers for these types of workloads.

Use the right file system for the right workload. As a result, Novell will support a number of file systems on Linux, and will provide guides as to which one is best suited for which workloads.

When Novell talked to customers about our plans for OES, it was strongly indicated to us that their current systems administrators know and understand NetWare very well, and may not be Linux “gurus” yet. We need to help ease them into the Linux world. Therefore, Novell has added some familiar NetWare utilities for Storage to OES Linux. The NSS Management utility has been written in NCURSES (a text based windowing tool) and looks and acts just like NSSMU on NetWare server console. The NetWare NSS server console commands and set parameters are also available with the NSSCON utility in a terminal session.

Any customization of the NSS file system on NetWare can be directly cut and pasted into the NSSSTART.CFG file on Linux to achieve the same result. Also, from a Linux terminal session, a rights utility is available to view, modify, and set NetWare trustee rights in NSS.

For those who are familiar with Linux commands and need to make NSS volumes using well known linux methods, those tools also work fine. Note, however, that using the mkfs command to create an NSS volume, will create the volume in a Linux partition. NetWare servers will not recognize the Linux partitions and cannot mount that data.

Standard shell commands will also work, but they only understand POSIX rights which do not map to the NSS Trustee rights model.

In order for Linux to recognize and understand NetWare partitions, the EVMS system is leveraged, as it is an extensible framework volume manager, unlike LVM which is not extensible. Novell has written plug-ins to EVMS which allow it to recognize NetWare partitions and allows NetWare partitions to be created via the EVMS GUI tools.

Standard shell commands will also work, but they only understand POSIX rights which do not map to the NSS Trustee rights model.

In order for Linux to recognize and understand NetWare partitions, the EVMS system is leveraged, as it is an extensible framework volume manager, unlike LVM which is not extensible. Novell has written plug-ins to EVMS which allow it to recognize NetWare partitions and allows NetWare partitions to be created via the EVMS GUI tools.

Novell has been working to gain commitments from backup developers to provide full NSS Metadata backup support for OES when it ships. Veritas, CommVault, and BakBone have committed to this support. SyncSort has also committed to this support, but just slightly after OES ships. Other vendors have not committed yet, but are working on plans to do so. Any vendor who currently has support for backup of Linux file systems on SLES 9 will be able to backup and restore NSS data, they just won’t be able to get to the rich NSS metadata (trustees, extended attributes, etc.)

Novell has been working to gain commitments from backup developers to provide full NSS Metadata backup support for OES when it ships. Veritas, CommVault, and BakBone have committed to this support. SyncSort has also committed to this support, but just slightly after OES ships. Other vendors have not committed yet, but are working on plans to do so. Any vendor who currently has support for backup of Linux file systems on SLES 9 will be able to backup and restore NSS data, they just won’t be able to get to the rich NSS metadata (trustees, extended attributes, etc.)

Novell has been working to gain commitments from backup developers to provide full NSS Metadata backup support for OES when it ships. Veritas, CommVault, and BakBone have committed to this support. SyncSort has also committed to this support, but just slightly after OES ships. Other vendors have not committed yet, but are working on plans to do so. Any vendor who currently has support for backup of Linux file systems on SLES 9 will be able to backup and restore NSS data, they just won’t be able to get to the rich NSS metadata (trustees, extended attributes, etc.)

Novell’s plans for the NSS file system include native 64-bit support on 64-bit CPUs (64-bit native SLES OS), work with File Access protocols to more tightly integrate them so that they can leverage the richness of NSS more effectively, and to increase the maximum volume size limit to beyond 8TB. Note: most customers backup hardware is limiting their practical volume sizes today, but technology in backup has been improving so that 8TB or larger will soon become practical from a storage infrastructure perspective.

NetStorage gives you a standard web browser view and access to all storage locations that a user has rights to. It gives you a consolidated view of all storage in one easy to access view, which can be securely accessed from anywhere on the internet from any machine with a browser.

Key features of NetStorage include the ability to manipulate files. The download to Edit will automatically lock a file, so that any other users who attempt to download the same file for editing will get a message that the file is locked and which user has it locked.

NetStorage in NW65 and OES has been enhanced with management capabilities (depending on the rights of the user accessing it). Trustees, Unix/Linux ACLs and file attributes can all be managed from the NetStorage interface.

Integrated into NetStorage is the ability to salvage files (NSS), and retrieve older versions of files when the Archive and Versioning server (introduced in NW65) is used.

Storage Locations allow NetStorage to be configured to display storage from non-Novell systems in the NetStorage web view. Storage from Windows, Unix/Linux, and NAS devices can be exposed to end users.

The directory pointed to by the eDirectory Home Directory attribute is also displayed in the NetStorage Web view (if this attribute is set and the user has rights to where it points to).

NetStorage executes the NetWare loginscripts defined for the user and displays the files and folders that are normally mapped as drives in their loginscript when they login normally.

The users iFolder store can also be accessed from NetStorage. Since iFolder stores are encrypted with a passphrase, the user must supply this passphrase in order to see their iFolder data.

NetStorage gives users a consistent and consolidated view of ALL their files and storage that may exist within the enterprise. They can securely access it from anyplace at any time.

McKay Brown

2002-04-25T15:40:43