Wasabi Certified^® BSD : Features

Choosing an operating system is one of the most critical design decisions for OEMs building network devices or server appliances. As network based products become increasingly rich in features new demands require a robust network operating system as a foundation. BSD has a 25 year heritage of ongoing enhancement and advancing networking features often copied by others. A robust operating environment that leverages open source Unix with commercial grade testing and support. Other open source operating systems have adverse licensing provisions or a "roll-your-own" quality that makes them unsuitable for complex applications with a substantial level of user developed intellectual property. Wasabi Certified BSD has the technical, support, and licensing features that are needed in today's and tomorrow's advanced network devices and server appliances.

To learn more about Wasabi Certified BSD's many features, select an item below:

Core OS Features

Wasabi Certified BSD is based upon BSD, an open source, Unix-like operating system that has been developed for over ten years by thousands of programmers around the world. In addition to its [outstanding networking functionality] BSD's portability and advanced system design make it an ideal OS choice for network-based applications, server appliances, and network-intensive storage products. Key BSD features include:

Advanced File System Support

• High Performance enhanced FFS (Many embedded products ship with an old version of the BSD FFS)
• All major filesystems supported including NFS version 3, MS-DOS FAT, Linux EXT2, ISO CD 9660, and NTFS
• 4.4BSD Log Structured File System (LFS)
• Wear-leveling Flash Support works with all file systems
• Robust file system support and file system layer abstraction
• Support for large filesystems of up to 4 terabytes

Secure, Protected Memory Design

• Advanced, object-oriented virtual memory with unified buffer cache and advanced sharing semantics
• All the standard Unix features:
• Memory protection
• Security
• Reliability
• Copy on write
• Sharable images

• Original Mach VM completely replaced with UVM
• Page loanout for zero-copy data movement
• Tunable page and file data cache
• Memory pool manager reduces TLB thrashing and object allocation overhead
• Tunable cache coloring

Comprehensive Device Driver Support

USB	SCSI
PCI	Serial ATA
RAID 0,1,5	VME
PXE	USB 2
iSCSI	PCMCIA
ATA100	Compact Flash
CardBus	Ethernet/GigE

Back to Top >

Interoperability

Unique binary compatibility protects users' investment in existing applications by in-kernel support for non-native binaries (for the same processor) to run transparently. Systems include:

• Linux (i386, m68k, alpha, powerpc, mips, arm)
• Solaris and SVR4 (sparc, i386, m68k)
• SunOS (m68k)
• BSD/OS (i386) and FreeBSD (i386)
• HP/UX (m68k)

Rich Unix Functionality

• Solid and Fast Internet Protocols
• IPSec and IPv6
• User-threads support
• Advanced Storage Protocols
• Remote Maintenance
• 3,000 software packages
• POSIX-compliant APIs
• RAID support
• 140 million lines of packaged third-party code
• 64 bit addressing capability

Lines of Code

Kernel	3,250,000
xsrc	5,500,000
Base Systems	10,512,000
Prepack. 3rd Party SW	140,000,000

 

Tiny Minimum Footprint

Footprint as small as 400KB

All major features including filesystems, advanced networking, remote access, console support, and a layer of userland applications suitable for a storage appliance or network black box.

Back to Top >

Networking Features

BSD is the gold standard in TCP implementations. Its renowned networking stack has been fully maintained and updated for over twenty five years, from its selection by DARPA to its contemporary status as the reference implementation for Unix.

Many OS kernels use BSD networking code, but often an old version, from 4.4BSD or earlier. However, only a fully up-to-date BSD networking stack takes advantages of the thousands of new lines of code written every year.

TCP/IP Development by Year

Year	Lines Changed
1993-94	12,780
1994-95	11,877
1996-97	9,241
1997-98	18,040
1999-2000	29,687
2000-01	14,671
2001-02	26,028

 

Standard networking features include:

• Comprehensive networking stack including IPv6 & IPv4, High security with IPSec (IPv4&IPv6),VPN Tunnels, Kerberos 5, SSH and OpenSSL support
• Routing and switching
• GbE support
• 802.11b support
• vlans and bridging
• All major filesystems supported including NFS version 3, DOS, FAT32, ext2FS (Linux) FFS, LFSfs, ISO 9660, NTFS
• Support for large filesystems of up to 4 terabytes - 64 bit addressing

Back to Top >

Special Embedded Features

Wasabi Certified BSD contains proprietary extensions created by Wasabi Systems engineered especially for embedded, networked storage, and server appliance uses. Special embedded features in Wasabi Certified BSD include:

• Support for wear leveling flash devices.
• A micro webserver to aid OEMs in the development of web-based user interfaces for remote system configuration and management.
• Boot from Compact Flash
• WasabiRAID and Wasabi Journaling File System (available as separately-licensed modules)
• Additional hardware support on some platforms
• TCP/IP optimizations

Platform retargeting and development services for embedded OEMs are also available from Wasabi Systems' professional services development team, the world's leading provider of embedded BSD products and services. Click here to find out more.

Certification and Testing

Wasabi Certified BSD is the only commercially-available, GPL-free Unix-like operating system with professional certification and support. All Wasabi Certified BSD packages have been thoroughly tested, certified, and documented at Wasabi's performance and testing facility. Wasabi's standard test procedure includes:

• Building the source code in accordance with the same instructions provided to users
• Installation of the binary image on the reference platform
• Exhaustive testing of all of the functions provided by the reference platform/software package according to generally accepted benchmarks and methodology
• Verification of the BSP documentation
• Documentation of the build and test procedures used to certify the software package

Moreover, as the BSD source code changes, existing Wasabi Certified BSD packages will be retested on a recurring basis to ensure that they are still fully functional. Wasabi Certified BSD takes the uncertainty out of BSD Unix. For more information about Wasabi testing and certification methodologies, or to purchase Wasabi Certified NetSBD for your hardware platform, contact us at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Back to Top >