SoftNAS® Enterprise

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Last updated: Jan 24, 2021

Note: SoftNAS® Enterprise™ is a legacy SoftNAS offering. While fully supported, significant changes will be seen in any version beyond SoftNAS 4.4.1. 


SoftNAS® Enterprise edition is a software-defined, full-featured enterprise cloud NAS filer for primary data using either block, object or both types of storage. SoftNAS Enterprise enables existing applications to securely migrate to the cloud without re-engineering and with dedicated and predictably high performance. With enterprise-class NAS features like: high-availability, in-line deduplication, compression, thin-provisioning, snapshots and rollbacks, replication, cloning, encryption (at-rest and in-transit), LDAP and Active Directory integration, and support for NFS, CIFS/SMB, iSCSI or AFP storage protocols, SoftNAS Enterprise protects mission-critical and primary, active/hot data. SoftNAS Enterprise offers the broadest range of storage options in terms of price vs. performance and backend storage selection, on-demand at petabyte scale across the AWS and Azure Marketplaces or on-premises.


SoftNAS® Enterprise supports the following platforms:

  • Cloud computing platforms such as Amazon EC2® and Microsoft® Azure™
  • On-premise Computing Infrastructure such as VMware vSphere®.

Features of SoftNAS Enterprise

  • Contains all the features and benefits of SoftNAS® Essentials edition and much more.

  • SoftNAS® Enterprise edition is a software-defined, full-featured enterprise cloud NAS filer for primary data storage, that enables existing applications to securely migrate to the cloud without re-engineering.

  • SoftNAS® Enterprise edition protects mission-critical and primary, active/hot data.

  • Highly Configurable - Customer has flexibility and choices:

    • more than 140 virtual machine types

    • across more than 6 storage backends in the public cloud for optimum balance of price vs. performance.

    • Use Block, Object or both storage backend storage types

    • Deploy SoftNAS on AWS or Microsoft Azure

    • Deploy on VMware vSphere hosts for on-premises storage on customer-owned or leased hardware systems.

  • SNAP HA® high-availability - patented, cross-region/zone high availability

  • No Storage Downtime Guarantee™ - SoftNAS SLA for customers deploying a SoftNAS HA configuration

  • Thin-provisioning - Only pay for public cloud storage that is actually used.

  • Replication - Data is replicated from one storage pool into a duplicate storage pool.

  • Cloning -Perfect for testing applications with real production data that is cloned for testing purposes

  • High Performance Back-end Storage Acceleration

    • The performance of Amazon EBS at the cost of Amazon S3

    • The performance of Microsoft Azure Block at the cost of Microsoft Azure Blob

    • Patent-pending ObjFast™ technology is a SoftNAS® acceleration method that speeds up the reads, writes and deletion of data located object storage (up to 400% faster) to near block-level storage performance. ObjFast throttles data transfer to cloud object storage so that it’s as fast as possible without exceeding the read/write capabilities.

    • Enables customers to use lower-cost cloud object storage backends (e.g., AWS S3 and Azure Blob) with performance levels rivaling that of cloud block storage backends (e.g., AWS EBS and Azure Disk).

    • Accelerated performance for backend object storage writes, deletes, edits, and reads — approaching native block storage performance levels.

    • The performance of block storage at the price of object storage

  • In-line Deduplication -Duplicated data is eliminated allowing for more efficient and cost-effective use of storage.

  • Compression - The amount of storage that data consumes is “shrunk” by removing extra “white space” between the blocks of data thereby reducing the overall storage required. Compression effectiveness is ultimately determined by the type of data being compressed as some data is more compressible than other types of data.

  • Veeam Tested - Certified to work with your Veeam backup software, so you can use native public cloud object storage backends—on-premises, public cloud, or hybrid cloud—to store backup replicas and targets.

  • Snapshots and Rollbacks - Protecting and recovering your data is easy by creating scheduled or manual snapshots to rollback data to a point-in-time—perfect for combating human error, technical glitches, malware, and ransomware.

  • Multi-Protocol Support - POSIX compliant file access to backend block and object storage via NFS, CIFS/SMB (with Active Directory), AFP (Apple File Protocol) and iSCSI block services.

  • Encryption - Data is encrypted in-transit and at-rest. Only the customer possesses the encryption keys.

  • Access Control - Integration with Microsoft Active Directory and LDAP, which provides secure access to customer data.

  • Storage Elasticity - Grow and shrink your storage requirements as-needed with thin-provisioning, storage pooling, and on-demand compute and storage cloud services.

  • Petabyte scale

  • In-Product Live Chat Support - Live chat access to a SoftNAS representative within the SoftNAS StorageCenter™ UI for faster and easier support help.


Use Cases of SoftNAS Enterprise

  • SaaS-enable Applications
    For revenue-generating SaaS applications, high performance, maximum uptime and strong security with access control are critical, no-compromise business requirements. Running your SaaS apps in a multi-tenant, public cloud environment can be challenging for all of those business requirements. Even operating in a public cloud environment,     SoftNAS® Enterprise edition provides: dedicated and high levels of performance, high-availability options for obtaining maximum uptime with a “No Storage Downtime Guarantee™” SLA, and strong security (encryption at-rest & in-transit) with integration to industry-standard access control (Active Directory & LDAP) — meeting all your critical SaaS application business requirements. In addition, SoftNAS Enterprise features an enterprise-grade, software only, virtual NAS that contains a host of other features that make the task of SaaS-enabling your apps in the public cloud faster and easier to accomplish.   

  • Migration of Business App Data to the Cloud
    Migrating existing applications into the cloud shouldn’t be complex, expensive, time-consuming, resource-intensive or forcing you to re-engineer/rewrite your application to run in the public cloud. If your existing applications access storage using CIFS/SMB, NFS, AFP or iSCSI storage protocols, then SoftNAS® Enterprise edition will allow your applications to access cloud storage (block or object) using the same protocols it already does. Since SoftNAS Enterprise is a robust and full-featured enterprise-grade, software only, virtual cloud NAS the features your existing application currently rely on are available in the public cloud. It’s easy to migrate your existing applications to the cloud without the need to rewrite/re-engineer them since SoftNAS Enterprise provides all the same functionality in the cloud that your applications use today on-premises or in your datacenters.

  • File Server Consolidation
    Over time, end-users and business applications create more and more data - usually unstructured and rather than waiting for the IT department, these users install file servers wherever they can find room to put them, close to their locations. At the same time, businesses either get acquired or do the acquiring of other companies and that means inheriting all their file servers. All of this ultimately leads to “server sprawl” that the IT department must deal with for OS and software patches, hardware upkeep and maintenance, and security. With limited IT staff and resources, this has become an impossible task. Enter the public cloud and SoftNAS® Enterprise edition to the rescue! By moving all the end-user files and data from seemingly endless number of file servers into the public cloud and providing the right balance of cost versus performance the IT department become heroes and the end-users are happy that they have easily scalable storage that is accessed the same way they have always accessed their files on the local files servers.

  • Legacy NAS Replacement
    With a limited IT staff and budget, it doesn’t make sense to keep investing in legacy NAS systems and to purchase more and more storage to keep pace with the rapid growth of data. SoftNAS ® Enterprise edition delivers enterprise-grade functionality in the cloud so businesses can avoid burdening their IT staff with the maintenance, support and upkeep while passing those responsibilities on to a cloud platform provider. By using SoftNAS Enterprise businesses also gain the advantages of dynamic storage scalability to keep pace with data growth and the flexibility to map performance and cost to their specific needs.