IT Pro Verdict

Broadberry’s hardware platform and the Open-E DSS software are a versatile combination which supports NAS, IP SAN and FC SAN operations straight from the box. It’s good value as licensing is only based on capacity and there’s room to grow with demand.

By Dave Mitchell

published 9 May 2012

in Reviews

Storage Features

Replication is supported so any volume can be mirrored to another Open-E appliance. During creation you can schedule snapshots to another local volume for regular point in time backups. NAS shares can be designated as WORM volumes and any type of volume can be expanded on the fly into spare space.

For IP SAN configuration you enter a size for each target, assign a LUN and enable CHAP authentication if required. Thin provisioning has yet to be implemented in DSS but a valuable feature is iSCSI failover as two physical adapters can be bound into a single virtual adapter so if one fails, all traffic is routed over the active one.

It's just as easy to create NAS shares and for access control, you can apply local user and group lists, workgroup or AD authentication. HTTP and FTP access can be allowed or denied on each share and for the latter you can limit the number of connections and enforce encrypted transfers.

NAS shares can also have virus scanning applied as Open-E has the open source ClamAV engine ready and waiting. It can be set to regularly scan selected shares, quarantine infected files to another share and automatically download signature database updates.

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Virus scans can be run on selected NAS shares and the appliance can look after its own backup jobs

The appliance also manages its own backup jobs where it secures selected volumes to a NAS share or a locally attached tape drive. Jobs can be scheduled regularly and can comprise full, incremental and differential backups. Open-E also provides embedded agents for popular backup products including Symantec's Backup Exec and CA's ARCserve.

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Dave is an IT consultant and freelance journalist specialising in hands-on reviews of computer networking products covering all market sectors from small businesses to enterprises. Founder of Binary Testing Ltd – the UK’s premier independent network testing laboratory - Dave has over 45 years of experience in the IT industry.

Dave has produced many thousands of in-depth business networking product reviews from his lab which have been reproduced globally. Writing for ITPro and its sister title, PC Pro, he covers all areas of business IT infrastructure, including servers, storage, network security, data protection, cloud, infrastructure and services.