readme100.txt

Release v1.0.0 of Zerver firmware is now available.

What is a Zerver ?

-- Web-page administration for --

-- Simple setup, configuration, and operation.

-- Reliable data storage and access using --

-- Redundant disks to protect against disk failure,

-- SmartMirror tasks scheduled monthly, weekly, daily, hourly --

-- To another system to protect against total system failure,

-- Internally to create snapshots for rollback and recovery.

-- Shared access to data by multiple users, supporting multiple
protocols.

-- Linux and other Free and Open Source Software to be
independent of Windows license and security concerns.


What is a ZerverModule(tm) ?

A ZerverModule is an IDE-interface device with a small
amount of flash memory that appears to a motherboard BIOS
like a bootable disk that holds the Zerver software/firmware,
current configuration information, local userids, other state
and security files such as "Active Directory" Windows Domain
data, and the long-term log files.


Zerver Details


-- RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) used to protect
against disk failure -- RAID-5-Checksum can keep operating
after the failure of any one disk in a Raid-Group, RAID-6
can keep operating after the failure of any two disks, and
RAID-1-Mirror can be used to any desired level of redundancy.

-- RAID used to create large file-system space from multiple
disks, up to 16TB.

-- Software RAID allows use of a wide range of disks (compare
with "hardware" RAID in which the firmware is on a controller
board, and can only operate with the disks directly connected
to that controller board).

-- Journal-File-System (EXT3) used for quick recovery from
unexpected shutdown (generally minutes, not hours for a full
File-System Check).

-- SmartMirror uses rsync to create and efficiently maintain
back-up files between two or more systems, on schedule of
hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly, using whatever bandwidth
is available.

-- SmartMirror scheduling, job linking, and options can be used
to automatically make daily, weekly or monthly full-back-up
sets, or sets of changed files.

-- Zerver Pair allows immediate mirror of a file system to
a completely separate system (but requires high-speed link
between the systems), to protect against catastrophic loss of
an entire system.

-- As NAS-Network-Attached-Storage, sharing data between users
is easy.

-- With multi communication protocols, sharing data between
users accessing with Windows, Macintosh, NFS (for Unix/Linux
systems), web-browsers, and/or FTP is easy.

-- Using Linux for the kernel and many FOSS Free and Open
Source Software projects, there are no per-seat license fees.

-- System structure is intended to allow current versions of
each of these projects.

-- System structure is intended to use a wide-range of hardware,
from one to four Intel/AMD CPU, up to 4 GB of memory, from
one to four network connections, with a wide range of disks
using IDE, SCSI, SATA, and/or USB.

-- The Zerver part of this system is focused on these limited
goals, so that set-up and operation will be simple.

-- For operation,

	-- e-mail alerts are used for system conditions

	-- SNMP can be used for performance monitoring

	-- NTP can be used to keep time synchronization

	-- program ZerverView can be used for some control
	operations

	-- SSH-Secure-Shell can be used for specialized
	maintenance tasks


-- Firmware, configuration, and long-term log files are on a
small flash ZerverModule (tm).	All disk space is available
for data storage.


What a Zerver is not --


-- Does not have transparent, automatic fail-over.  Within a
redundant Raid-Group, drives can fail without any disruption,
but failure of an entire Zerver (by fire, flood, lightning,
etc) is not recovered automatically.  Zerver Pair can be used
to keep two Zerver mirrored within a few seconds of each other,
but the recovery will require each client for each protocol
to make use of the mirror.

-- Does not have support for hardware hot-swap.

-- Does not have an elaborate security model.
Network administrators who wish to maintain exhaustive
ACL-Access-Control-Lists of operations, users, and groups for
every directory and for every file will not be pleased with
the Zerver security model of Share-Names and User-Accounts.

-- Is not intended for use in a hostile (network) environment.
Although all admin operations are done with admin web pages
which are user-password protected, those passwords are not
SSL-encrypted.

-- Does not encrypt data on disk.  Upon theft of a Zerver,
the data would be readable.