Most file servers are accessed via NFS or CIFS which is fine for local seupts. As soon as you are away from your office, you have to work with a VPN tunnel and a file system that was not really designed for slow network links.

XtreemFS was designed for the internet. You can mount your file system in the local network as well as over the internet right out of the box. You just need to make sure that the ports for the XtreemFS services are open in your firewall.

The built-in X.509 and SSL support in XtreemFS ensures that your file system is only accessed by authorized people and that all data transfer is encrypted. With the client-side metadata caching you can work smoothly even over high latency links such as DSL or 3G.

XtreemFS started as a grid file system project. The main idea for XtreemFS was to alleviate Grid users from constantly copying files around the globe and keeping track of all those copies.

Instead, we developed a regular file system with POSIX semantics that hides the complexity of replication and file access over the internet. Users can use all applications without modifications and still benefit from XtreemFS advanced features.

XtreemFS volumes can be mounted via the internet, no need for special network setups or VPNs. You just need to install XtreemFS servers and clients on the grid machines and all users can access their files on all machines in the Grid.

SSL and x.509 support make XtreemFS usable in insecure environments and smoothly integrates with PKIs found in most Grid installations. The authorization plug-ins in XtreemFS make it easy to customize XtreemFS to your policies.

Copying files between sites is a common task for Grid users. Unfortunetely. For the XtreemOS Grid operating system we decided to make ther user's life easier. We developed XtreemFS to give users a single, global home directory.

When an administrator creates a new user account, the XtreemOS services automatically create a home volume for that users at his home site. Whenever the user logs in to a node or starts a job, her home volume is automatically mounted. Users have full access to their files on all nodes, world wide. Users can keep scripts, input data and job results in their home directories.

The built-in replication of XtreemFS helps to reduce network usage and latency through local replicas and also increases data availability.