Overview

How Does Wasabi Cloud NAS Work?

As soon as you install and activate Wasabi Cloud NAS on the computer, you can create as many pairs consisting of a source and a bucket storage system as you wish. While in most cases users and applications work directly on the source location, the virtual storage unity displays the contents of both the source and the bucket, as if it is stored locally. By applying one or more of the following data management mechanisms, Wasabi Cloud NAS distributes data among the two layers of the virtual unity:

Data Replication — Wasabi Cloud NAS copies a file from the source to the bucket. Automatic replication is performed based on user-defined criteria. You can also manually replicate a file or a whole folder from the source to the bucket, using the Wasabi Cloud NAS shell extension. While Data Replication is indispensable for all other data management mechanisms, it can also be used standalone for addressing the simplest scenarios, such as data backup and disaster recovery. To learn more, refer to Configuring Automatic Data Replication.

Space Reclaiming — Wasabi Cloud NAS frees space on the source by replacing a replicated file with a near-line file. A nearline file is a stub file, which looks exactly like the actual file it replaces, but does not contain any data and does not take up space on your source. A nearline file points to the actual file on the bucket, which allows its retrieval back on the source. The retrieval from the bucket is automatic if a user, an application, or a process attempts to access the nearline file. Or, the retrieval can be manual through Wasabi Cloud NAS. Automatic Space Reclaiming is performed based on user-defined criteria. You can also perform manual Space Reclaiming, using the Wasabi Cloud NAS shell extension. The most common scenario with Space Reclaiming is alignment of data with storage costs. To learn more, refer to Configuring Space Reclaiming.

Active Sync — The contents of multiple sources is automatically synchronized, each on a different computer running Wasabi Cloud NAS through a common bucket. Designed to facilitate geo replication scenarios, this mechanism allows you to select whether to synchronize the contents across all sources paired with the same bucket or set some sources to update their contents with updates from other sources. To learn more, refer to Configuring Active Sync.

Data Synchronization — Wasabi Cloud NAS allows you to manually synchronize the contents of a bucket with its source. In case Wasabi Cloud NAS detects that a file on the bucket is not available on the source, the synchronization mechanism automatically creates a nearline counterpart for the missing file. Manual Data Synchronization facilitates scenarios involving data migration from one source to another and disaster recovery of data. For more information, refer to Synchronizing Data on the Source and the Bucket.

In combination with additional configuration parameters, Wasabi Cloud NAS can be deployed for any of the following purposes:

• Data backup and disaster recovery
• Alignment of data with storage costs
• Extending local storage or a file server’s storage capacity to Wasabi
• Interfacing object storage
• Geo replication

Data Protection

While Wasabi Cloud NAS gains programmatic access to your data at the source location and the bucket location, it takes care to prevent unauthorized access to it both when at rest and in transit.

To gain access to any Wasabi Cloud NAS functions, you need to authenticate yourself as the administrator of the computer on which Wasabi Cloud NAS runs. For more information, refer to Wasabi Cloud NAS Interfaces.

• The Wasabi Cloud NAS work flow supports applying any Windows techniques for controlling access to and protecting data at rest at source level.
• Wasabi Cloud NAS does not require maximum privileges of the credentials used for access to the bucket and adopts the bucket’s own mechanisms for ensuring credentials protection is not compromised.
• The credentials for access to the bucket are stored in the registry of the computer running Wasabi Cloud NAS and are encrypted using Advanced Encryption Standard with Wasabi’s 256-bit key.
• Data in transit to cloud buckets is protected, allowing users to benefit from secure transfer (SSL/TLS) and also relying on the bucket provider's mechanism for protecting data in transit.