ezNAS presents a unified storage export paradigm by supporting both block-level and file-level storage networking protocols. Storage may be allocated across any or all protocols simultaneously allowing data to be accessed from a heterogeneous base of network clients - be they Linux, Unix, Windows or Mac.

Horizontal scale-out of computing resources through Operating System virtualization technologies is supported. iSCSI target functionality in ezNAS is a compelling solution for allocating and managing backend storage to complete the overall virtualization architecture. In ezNAS, iSCSI coupled with ezNAS's powerful dynamic volume manager gives administrators a powerful and flexible storage networking solution that will scale in terms of performance, reliability and availability.

Powerful Management Capabilities

Administrative capabilities of ezNAS are met through a powerful and intuitive web-based graphical user interface (GUI). All facets of storage networking capabilities in ezNAS are controlled via this management interface. Management capabilities are grouped into separate sub-interfaces in accordance with their functional domain; networking, physical volumes, user and group authentication/authorization, system configuration and status information views.

At the base level, allocation of disks or other block-level resources such as hardware RAID volumes into distinct components can be achieved within the physical volume management view. Physical volume management is in turn a sub-domain of the overall volume management capabilities in the GUI which includes features such as dynamic volume aggregation, logical volume allocation and distribution and point in time copy (snapshot) management.

Administrators will also appreciate the ability to perform resource limiting tasks with the excellent quota management tool. ezNAS supports quota management for both users and groups. The storage resource allocation rules allow the administrator to control the amount of disk capacity usage as well as filesystem objects, files and directories, that a user or group may consume. If a group is allocated a certain amount of resources, the administrator can further limit resources for particular users within that group.

ezNAS also presents the administrator with a view of system status - displaying system resource usage such as memory, processor and storage capacity. This allows the administrator to better plan for future resource allocation requirements.