FAQ

What is Rockstor?

RockStor is a free and open source NAS(Network Attached Storage) solution. It's a software solution and can be installed on any hardware or a virtual machine satisfying these minimum requirements

How can I share files using Rockstor?

Rockstor works as a centralized file storage server and supports popular protocols like Samba/CIFS, NFS and SFTP. Linux, Apple and Windows clients can store and access files from your Rockstor box.

How is Rockstor different from other software NAS products?

Just like other NAS products, Rockstor supports file storage via popular protocols(NFS, Samba/CIFS, SFTP). Besides that broad similarity, there are many differences. Rockstor is Linux based and uses BTRFS as the underlying filesystem. It makes storage management easy with smart features and a powerful UI. It exposes a RESTful API to be used as a high performance storage backend in Cloud infrastructure. These are just a few differences. Give Rockstor a try and you’ll notice the value and differentiation right away.

How is Rockstor different from Dropbox, Google Drive and other Cloud Storage offerings?

For home/small-office users Rockstor works as personal cloud storage and unlike public cloud storage services, all of your data resides on your appliance. In other words, you have complete control and ownership of your data and you can store lots of it at very low cost. We have plans to make Rockstor compatible and interoperable with popular public cloud storage offerings.

How much does Rockstor cost?

Zero USD. You can use the product in it’s entirety for free of cost and explore Free Support options. For commercial support options, visit our website.

Does Rockstor support Block and Object storage?

Not currently. But since Rockstor is open source, anyone in our community can work with us to get new features added in the future.

How can I get started with Rockstor?

Rockstor is made available as a complete Linux distribution in the ISO file format or a USB image and can be installed on bare metal or as a virtual machine. Installation of Rockstor is a very easy and short process. See Quickstart to get started.

What kind of hardware do I need to install Rockstor?

Rockstor runs on 64-bit commodity hardware. You can run it as a virtual machine, or install it on bare metal. See Quickstart for more information.

What is a quick way to evaluate Rockstor?

For quick evaluation, install Rockstor on Virtual Box, VMWare or try it out on Amazon EC2. See Quick evaluation for more information.

Do you have any hardware recommendations?

For individual or small business use, we’ve seen Rockstor install flawlessly on HP, DELL and supermicro servers and desktops. The developers of Rockstor use HP Micro servers for individual use. Rockstor also installed smoothly on latest generation servers from vendors like HP and Supermicro.

What Linux flavor is rockstor based on?

Rockstor 3.x is based on CentOS 7. We rebrand CentOS, add Rockstor software in the form of additional rpms and change the installer to make it a bit more straight forward.

What is the underlying filesystem of Rockstor?

BTRFS all the way! Though there's lot more to Rockstor than the filesystem, at the core Rockstor productizes neat features of BTRFS filesystem.

How is Rockstor licensed?

Rockstor is free software licenced under the terms of GNU General Public License version 2. See here for more details.