18 October 2011, 12:23

Debian-based NAS OpenMediaVault released

Following two years of development, OpenMediaVault (OMV) project founder and lead developer Volker Theile has announced the arrival of the first release of his open source NAS (network-attached storage) operating system, code-named "Ix". Created by Theile – who is also a FreeNAS and Debian developer – OpenMediaVault is a Debian-based rewrite of the FreeBSD-based FreeNAS distribution.

The project's first release, version 0.2, is based on Debian 6.0 "Squeeze" and features a modular plug-in system to add additional services. Three optional plug-ins are currently available for Apple Filing Protocol (AFP), BitTorrent and an iTunes/DAAP server; iSCSI-Target, UPS and LVM plug-ins "will be released later after the first wave of bug reports has been fixed".

Aimed at home users and small offices, OMV is designed to be "simple and easy to use out-of-the-box" and is administered via a web-based interface. It includes support for hard drive power management, as well as software RAID JBOD/0/1/5/6 (mdadm) and S.M.A.R.T. monitoring with email notifications. Supported filesystems include EXT3, EXT4, XFS and JFS.

OMV is designed for installation on a small SSD or disk on module (DOM) – Theile notes that the whole boot disk will be used for the OS as doing so reduces some problems. Users are advised to disconnect all drives except the one which will be used for the OS during installation "otherwise the Debian installer fails or installs Grub on the wrong harddisk".

Further information about the release can be found on the features page, on the project wiki and in a post on the OpenMediaVault blog. Videos of OpenMediaVault in action can be found on the project's YouTube channel. OpenMediaVault 0.2 (Ix) is available to download as an ISO image file. Hosted on SourceForge, OpenMediaVault source code is licensed under the GPLv3 and development is supported through donations.

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