Introduction

What is Ferro?

Ferro is a high-performance, self-hosted file storage platform built entirely in Rust. It provides WebDAV-compatible file access, content-addressable storage with deduplication, OIDC authentication, full-text search, WASM-based file processing, and WOPI protocol support for online document editing.

Ferro is a storage orchestrator -- it sits between your files and the storage backends, providing a unified API for accessing, searching, sharing, and processing files regardless of where they are stored.

Key Features

• WebDAV Server -- Full Class 1/2/3 compliance (PROPFIND, MKCOL, PUT, GET, DELETE, COPY, MOVE, LOCK, UNLOCK, PROPPATCH)
• Multiple Storage Backends -- In-memory, local filesystem, S3, GCS, Azure Blob Storage
• Content-Addressable Storage -- SHA-256 deduplication, saves space automatically
• OIDC Authentication -- PKCE login flow with Keycloak, Auth0, Google, etc.
• Cedar Authorization -- Fine-grained policy-based access control
• Full-Text Search -- Tantivy-powered search with auto-indexing
• WASM Workers -- Run custom file processing pipelines (resize, convert, transform)
• WOPI Protocol -- Online document editing via Collabora/OnlyOffice
• CalDAV / CardDAV -- Calendar and address book access (RFC 5545, RFC 6350)
• ActivityPub Federation -- Share files across Ferro instances using the fediverse
• Share Links -- Public file sharing with optional passwords and expiration
• Audit Logging -- Track all file operations
• Metadata Snapshots -- Point-in-time recovery for ransomware protection
• File Versioning -- Keep multiple versions per file with diff support
• Rate Limiting -- Per-IP token-bucket rate limiter (10,000 req/min)
• Web UI -- Modern Leptos-based file browser with drag-and-drop upload
• Admin CLI -- Full command-line management tool
• FUSE Mount -- Access remote files as a local directory on Linux
• Desktop App -- Tauri desktop application for file browsing
• E2E Encryption -- age-based file encryption (X25519, ChaCha20-Poly1305)

Comparison with Nextcloud / OCIS

Architecture Overview

                         +-------------------+
                         |     Web UI        |
                         |   (Leptos WASM)   |
                         +--------+----------+
                                  |
                         +--------+----------+
                         |   Reverse Proxy   |
                         |     (Caddy)       |
                         +--------+----------+
                                  |
                    +-------------+-------------+
                    |          Axum Server       |
                    |   +------+-------+------+  |
                    |   | Auth | Rate  | CORS |  |
                    |   | Layer| Limit |Layer |  |
                    |   +------+-------+------+  |
                    |   |     Security Headers    |
                    |   +------------------------+|
                    |   |      Middleware Stack    |
                    |   +------------------------+|
                    |          |                 |
                    |  +-------+-------+         |
                    |  | WebDAV  | REST | GraphQL |
                    |  | Handler | API  | Handler |
                    |  +---------+------+---------+
                    |  | CalDAV  |CardDAV| WOPI  |
                    |  | Handler |Handler|Handler |
                    |  +---------+------+---------+
                    |  |  WebSocket  | Federation  |
                    |  |  Handler    | Handler     |
                    |  +-------------+-------------+
                    |          |                  |
                    |  +-------+------------------+
                    |  |    AppState             |
                    |  | - StorageEngine         |
                    |  | - MetadataStore         |
                    |  | - SearchEngine          |
                    |  | - LockManager           |
                    |  | - WsManager             |
                    |  +-------------------------+
                    +-------------+-------------+
                                  |
               +------------------+------------------+
               |                  |                  |
        +------+------+   +------+------+   +------+------+
        | In-Memory   |   | Local FS    |   | Object Store|
        | Storage     |   | Storage     |   | (S3/GCS/Az) |
        +-------------+   +-------------+   +-------------+

License

Ferro is licensed under AGPL-3.0-or-later.