SMBStream Secure Accelerated Access to SMB Shares Over Internet From Storage Made Easy

Storage Made Easy (SME) announced SMBStream, which can work alongside its Enterprise File Fabric product or can be configured to work standalone with direct SMB Shares.

SMBStream provides secure accelerated access to SMB Shares across the Internet. A small agent is co-located in the same network as the NAS or filer providing the SMB Share. The agent provides access to a containerized controller at a remote site via a TLS 1.3-encrypted tunnel. Traffic is always encrypted and key-based authentication asserts the identity of both the controller and the agent.

The product is an extension of the company’s M-Stream feature-set optimized for remote SMB shares. M-Stream acceleration for SMB is a factor of 10x faster than a typical VPNs and is tolerant to high latency and dropped packets. SMBStream is filer agnostic and compatible with both on-premise NAS or Windows Filer shares, or on-cloud SMB shares such as Amazon FSx or Azure Files.

SMBStream differs from a VPN in that VPNs commonly just tunnel traffic between sites by encapsulating packets. VPN clients often need to install software, or network administrators are required to make routing changes to allow client access. The SMBStream controller makes available SMB shares without client software installation or network changes.