NexentaStor is a proprietary derivative operating system built by the developers of the open-source Nexenta OpenSolaris-distribution that has been optimized for use virtualized server environments NAS and iSCSI and Fibre Channel applications built around the ZFS file system. It features iSCSI support, unlimited incremental backups or 'snapshots', snapshot mirroring (replication), block level mirroring (CDP), integrated search within ZFS snapshots and a custom API. Through its focus on ZFS, it carries with it potential benefits for virtualized server farms in terms of performance and thin provisioning. The operating system is currently distributed as ISO and VMware disk images with pricing determined on a per-terabyte and per-server licensing basis.[1] A "Community Edition" is available free of charge for users with less than 18 terabytes of used disk space.[2]
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The "Community Edition" of NexentaStor is a no-charge version of the storage appliance. The Community Edition includes all the common SAN features of the paid version (snapshots, replication, deduplication, etc.) and can be used on storage setups up to 18 TB of used storage (that is, it will run on a system with any amount of available storage but freezes most administration functions once 18 TB of data is present). The Community Edition also lacks commercial end-user support or the inclusion of paid plugins though it can install many of the free and open source plugins that are developed and hosted on the Community Edition website.
following features are not available in Community Edition: