Unified Centralized Management of Data with Openfiler

Unified centralized management of data is possible with Openfiler which provides an web based interface for network attached storage and block storage. Openfiler is a free software and licensed under GNU GPL. Previously we have discussed, configured cloud servers to deal with web services, databases, mail and collaboration softwares, in this article we are going describe a system that adds a storage server to your cloud infrastructure, so that you can centralize the management of all stored data.

Unified centralized management of data is possible with Openfiler

Openfiler is a Linux distribution, like Redhat, it is created specifically to provide storage services based both on the block storage, acting as a SAN, both on files, operating as a NAS. Openfiler is free as basic version, in case you want to take advantage of the advanced features (for example, to create cluster nodes with high reliability), have to purchase a license.

Given that the service offered by your IaaS provider is already good and provides the basic guarantee of continuity of service (all cloud servers are of high reliability, as well as the devices that store data to the virtual disks by definition is of higher service continuity), the basic version is enough for normal range of usage.

Basic Outline of How Unified Centralized Management of Data Can be Done with Openfiler

Create a new cloud server with 1 core CPU, 1 GB of RAM and the amount of space of space that you find it necessary, remember that it is not necessary to create RAID arrays (each virtual hard disk that you decide to add to the server already has redundant base), and that greater is the amount of RAM available and will be the most handsome for storage server; therefore, if necessary, you can perform an upgrade to 2, 4 or 8 GB of RAM to speed up the exchange of data.

Once the server is active, connect the second adapter to vSwitch created earlier and assign the IP address, in this way also the other servers will be able to access the storage server. At this point we can proceed with the configuration of Openfiler and to do so, you can use the web interface, that is accessible by typing https://IPSERVER:446 and inserting “openfiler” for the username along with the root password chosen during the creation of the server. Once logged into the control panel, your will see the administrative dashboard with a summary of the technical information of cloud server.

Proceed to configure the LDAP server that will host the data of the users and will have access to our new storage server : click on the tab “Accounts” and activate the LDAP server by checking the checkbox “Use LDAP”. The user interface is really easy and there is good community, documentation etc. :