YNQ™ Adds Server/Client SMBv3 Capabilities To VxWorks OS
VxWorks is a popular real-time operating system (RTOS) for embedded systems. The VxWorks RTOS is feature-rich, runs on most modern CPU architectures, and is known for deterministic & low-latency performance. As a result, VxWorks is trusted in a wide-variety of industries — particularly those where safety and security certifications matter — including aerospace, healthcare, industrial, automotive, and telecommunications.
Given its ubiquity, embedded systems running VxWorks are often deployed in heterogeneous networks where the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol is used for file and resource sharing. However, VxWorks doesn’t natively support SMB.
Visuality Systems’ YNQ™ — which is the only SMB for VxWorks solution — solves this problem and allows embedded systems developers to enable full SMB file sharing on any VxWorks version as well as Wind River Linux and VxWorks 653.
The Benefits of SMB for VxWorks
With an SMB software stack, embedded systems running VxWorks can securely and efficiently share resources and files with a wide variety of network endpoints including Windows, Linux, macOS, and iOS devices.
While VxWorks can use protocols like FTP (File Transfer Protocol) and SFTP ( Secure File Transfer Protocol) can also enable file transfers, SMB provides more robust and efficient resource sharing. Because SMB is natively supported on Windows and macOS, the integration of VxWorks systems into heterogeneous is simpler than with other file transfer protocols. A VxWorks device running an SMB stack can communicate with Windows and macOS systems without users installing any additional software. With FTP/SFTP, users must install client or server software on each endpoint. The YNQ Client on a VxWorks device can operate as file system driver (a plug and play solution) or as an application on the VxWorks RTOS.
Additionally, SMB goes beyond the simple file transfer functionality of FTP/SFTP and other file transfer protocols. For example, SMB enables multiple clients to read and write to the same file on an SMB server, while FTP/SFTP requires clients to download local copies of files. This makes SMB more efficient from a resource perspective (clients aren’t transferring and copying files locally) and visibility perspective (all clients can see the changes to the file immediately). SMB also improves data security with features such as pre-logon integrity, end-to-end encryption, and support for modern encryption algorithms like AES-128-GCM. Further, in the event a file does need to be copied over to a client machine, SMB ensures all file attributes are maintained.
VxWorks systems running YNQ™ support all SMB versions up to and including SMBv3.1.1. This means VxWorks embedded systems get the SMB performance improvements and security benefits. VxWorks systems with YNQ™ also gain Active Directory support that allows easy integration to AD networks. Integrating the off-the-shelf YNQ library into VxWorks enables connectivity with any SMB client or server supported machine.
YNQ™ SMB for VxWorks software features
| Feature | Client | Server |
|---|---|---|
|
Support all SMB/CIFS versions from SMB1 to SMB 3.1.1 |
|
|
|
SMB Encryption |
|
|
|
Message Signing |
|
|
|
Pre-logon integrity |
|
|
|
File/Directory operations include open, read, write, querying info and more |
|
|
|
Network Browsing (domains, hosts and shares) |
|
|
|
Host resolution through DNS, LLMNR and NetBIOS |
|
|
|
Optimized reads and writes |
|
|
|
Authentication LM to NTLMV2 SPNEGO |
|
|
|
Authentication for Local Users |
|
|
|
Active Directory Integration |
|
|
|
DCERPC over SMB – SAMR, and LSA |
|
|
|
DCERPC over SMB – SRVSVC, WKSSVS, WINREG |
|
|
|
IPv4 and IPv6 Support |
|
|
|
File System Driver Support |
|
|
Lilia Wasserman, VP R&D, Visuality Systems
