This is a wikified post of the high level product overview sometimes requested as part of a press kit for reviews etc… We thought it’s a good idea to have the living document here in the forum. Feel free to reply with your feedback to improve this document.
About Rockstor
Rockstor is a Network Attached Storage (NAS) and private cloud storage solution that can be easily managed from any smart device within a local area network or over the web. Rockstor is based on advanced Linux technologies like BTRFS, Docker and others. Although an early-stage platform, the open-source software powered by Linux and BTRFS, is rapidly gaining fans within the storage community for its powerful features and ease-of-use.
A range of tasks such as: storage and server management, task scheduling, file sharing via NFS, Samba, SFTP and AFP, online volume management, Copy on Write (CoW) Snapshots, Asynchronous replication, Compression, and Bitrot protection and others can be done through the web user-interface. Rockstor comes with Docker-based apps (called Rock-ons) for VPN, cloud storage, syncing, media streaming and more – users can request or even add custom Rock-ons to extend functionality.
The Goals and Attributes of a Rockstor powered NAS
**Attributes** | **Goals**
“Empowerment” | For individuals and organizations
| to have complete control over how they consume, share and manage
| their data, devices and appliances.
“Privacy” | Allow data to be stored on users’ appliances and premises.
“Simplicity” | Simplify storage management. Data scattered across multiple devices
| is managed from one place.
“Free and Open Source “ | Powered by Linux (Cent OS7) and BTRFS. Distributed with GNU Public
| License (GPL). To build a strong community of contributors around the
| product.
“Hardware Agnostic” | To democratize SMB and Prosumer NAS/cloud-server market to enable
| individuals and organizations to run Rockstor on commodity hardware or
| hypervisor of their choice and not depend on proprietary appliances.
|
“Security” | Protect data from theft, loss and unintentional access. Expose users to
| the rich BTRFS feature set.
“Ease-of-use” | Enable prosumers and organizations to build and manage their own NAS
| and Cloud storage with ease using a simple GUI installer and Web UI.
| Easily add capacity (disks) to NAS
“Interoperability” | Allow data to move between public cloud, Rockstor and users’ devices.
|
“Cost effectiveness” | Provide cost effective advanced and robust NAS to prosumers and
| organizations. Reduce cost of storing large amounts of data.
|
“Scalability” | Enable prosumers and organizations to easily manage data footprint at low
| incremental cost.
“Incremental Development” | Product and features are developed incrementally with regular updates and
| bug fixes.
"Resource-light" | To consume minimal of users' system resources, such as RAM etc.**
Rockstor Product Features
Below is the high level breakdown of features. More information is available on our website.
Linux, BTRFS based open source storage OS. Runs on commodity hardware.
Copy-on-write Snapshots of Shares on demand and on schedule.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------**
Fast and online vertical capacity scaling.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------**
Docker based plug-ins called Rock-ons for OwnCloud, BitTorrent Sync, Plex Media Server, OpenVPN, Syncthing, Transmission BitTorrent client to perform functions such as media streaming, backups, cloud storage etc.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------**
Bitrot protection, checksums, compression and other advanced file system (BTRFS) features**
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------**
File sharing and access from Linux, Mac, Windows and Mobile devices**
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------**
File backup with Rsync, Apple Time Machine and Windows Backup**
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------**
Simple GUI installer and secure browser based management**
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------**
Disaster recovery made easy by Rockstor to Rockstor replication.**
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------**
Resource monitoring with customizable Dashboard and SNMP**
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------**
Frequently Asked Questions
List of FAQs is available at: http://rockstor.com/docs/faq.html
Feel free to ask questions at Rockstor community: http://forum.rockstor.com