Datastores

Datastores store data and are accessed by the FreeRADIUS server to retrieve that data. Datastores do not perform authentications and possess limited decision making capabilities.

The key differences between RADIUS servers and datastores are the way they support policies and authentication. The role of a datastore is to provide data to a RADIUS server. The RADIUS server authenticates the user with a select authentication method on the retrieved data.

When a RADIUS server authenticates a user or stores accounting data for that user, it reads from or writes to a datastore. User information (i.e., user name, password, credit amount) and session data (i.e., total session time and statistics for total traffic to and from the user) are stored on this datastore or directory. We use the term "datastore" to mean that some of the storage methods are not traditional databases, but they do still store data.