Introduction#

Enterprise Solid Server (ESS) is a Solid Pod Server. That is, ESS provides/hosts Solid Pods (where Pods are data storage locations) in accordance with the Solid specification.

ESS Architecture#

ESS’ microservices architecture:

Enables support for highly available deployment configurations.
Enables simple scaling.

Overview of ESS front-end and back-end services.

Pod Management#

Pods are where users store their data. When ESS provisions a new Pod, it creates the Pod with the URL https://<ESS domain>/<username>/. As part of the process, ESS also creates a WebID, https://<ESS domain>/<username>/profile/card#me, for the user.

When creating a Pod, ESS creates the following default structure under the Pod’s root (where the Pod is represented as a directory structure):

<Pod's root> = https://<ESS domain>/<username>/
│
├── 📁 policies/
│
├── 📁 profile/
│       └──📄 card
├── 📁 inbox/
│
├── 📁 private/
│
├── 📁 public/
│
└── 📁 settings/
        └── 📄publicTypeIndex.ttl
        └── 📄privateTypeIndex.ttl
        └── 📄prefs.ttl

ESS fully supports the W3C Linked Data Platform (LDP) specification. As such, navigating, creating, deleting and editing resources within a Pod is directly supported via the standard interfaces. For more information, see LDP Service.

Notifications#

New in version 1.1.

ESS provides a secure implementation of a WebSockets notification protocol. ESS WebSocket service sends notifications upon changes to Resources. Applications can subscribe to a particular Resource, including a Container, and receive notifications upon changes to the subscribed Resource(s).

For more information, see WebSocket Notification Service.

Advanced Security#

ESS’ security features include:

Solid OpenID Connect (OIDC) Service to support login with any existing OIDC-compliant identity provider.
Support for Access Control Policies (ACP).
Auditing.

For more information, see Security.

Administrative Operations#

You can set up a centralized logging system to a backend logging system.
You can backup and restore at the individual Pod level or at the database level.

For more information, see Administration.

Discovery#

New in version 1.1.3.

To help the discovery of various feature endpoints (such as the GraphQL endpoint, the WebSocket notification endpoint), ESS provides the .well-known/solid resource.

For more information, see Discovery.

Support#

Inrupt offers up to 24/7 support for operators and developers with a commercial license for ESS.

See Inrupt Support Center.

Additional Information on Solid#

The Solid specification defines various Solid server/Pod behaviors, such as those related to: